However, for some, Christmas time isn't the most beautiful time. For some it is filled with pain and loneliness. For some it is a horrible reminder of what once was, never to be again. For some it is completely void of family, friends, money, presents or happiness.
This Christmas season our family has been dealt the hand of grief when we learned just a week ago that Brian's father passed away. As we made travel arrangements for the trip to Chicago I observed the look of sadness in my husbands eyes. I could sense his heaviness as he poured over his father's eulogy, the very one he himself would deliver just 2 days later at the service. I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for him. I prayed and prayed for God to comfort him. That he would find just the right words to speak of his father's 68 years on this earth. I know the task weighed heavily on his shoulders and yet when the time came he delivered it with grace. The pain of watching him choke through several sentences will stay with me forever. The inability to take away someone's pain is haunting.
When I lost my mom 11 years ago I'll never forget that first Christmas and the pain that was. The horrible feeling of realization that I would never again spend another one with her. And now that sadness has descended upon my husband. While he and his father weren't close per se, he was still his father. They spoke somewhat regularly and facing the fact that he will never be able to speak to him again is, I know, a painful feeling. Its a strange concept and one that your heart and mind takes a while to come to grips with. How I wish I could ease his pain. Oh how my heart breaks knowing the road of grief that must be traveled and how I cannot speed it up or make it go away altogether.
How we hate to see the ones we love hurt and yet this life, unfortunately, will always give way to pain and sadness. But God...
God sent His son and no he wasn't born on Christmas Day but I think of Mary and how Jesus' birth had to be one mixed with joy and grief. Jesus was born to die for sins of the people of this world. I can't imagine for one minute that the weight her Son would have to carry didn't cross her mind on the day she gave Him life. She gave Him life so He could save hers, and yours and mine.
And so whatever grief you may be feeling during this Christmas season allow your Heavenly Father to fill your heart with Joy, after all, that is why He came. I'm not saying you have to be happy, you may not have one thing to "feel" happy about but you can always choose Joy because Joy is a fruit of the spirit and we can have it and choose it because we know what Jesus did for us on that cross. Because we know that joy comes from knowing our Heavenly Father LOVES US and when we ABIDE in HIM our JOY may be FULL or complete. See John 15:8-11
CHOOSE JOY AND I PROMISE YOU CAN HAVE A
MERRY CHRISTMAS.
