Merry Christmas!
I've been thinking a lot about a lot of things this holiday season. There has been a lot of change in my life this last year, and I often feel as if the traditions, things, and people are slipping through my fingers like sand. I've felt out of place, unwelcome, and afraid. Besides that, I've felt an obligation as a big sister to carry as much as I can and try not to show it when I break, something I'm not good at. (I'd like to thank Disney's Encanto for the song "Surface Pressure" and these out of context lines "Give it to your sister, your sister's stronger / See if she can hang on a little longer / Who am I if I can't carry it all?") Yet at the same time, I've felt welcomed and safe. I am in a better environment than I was at the start of 2021. There are little markers of joy that I get to experience. I think my favorite one is a 24 pound dog named Snickerz. Last night I sat at my church's Christmas Eve service from my usual spot behind the livestream station. I ran the livestream like usual, listened to amazing music, heard the story about Barrington Bunny and cried, typical for me. But as I was sitting there while a solo was being sung, I felt something deep in my heart. I've always been a little jealous of the people who say that can literally hear God, because I only have audibly heard Him once. Most of the time it is a crystal clear feeling I get, a holy warmth like a welcome hug, a sentence in my mind as clear as if I read it on a page. As I sat there, what I felt was "Don't forget, I came for you, too." It is so easy to sit in our own shame, fear, doubt, and anxiety and discount ourselves. It is so easy to let the fear about tomorrow eat us alive. There's an audio circling around TikTok that says "If Jesus died for all our sins, he left one behind, the body I'm in" and it breaks my heart. He didn't. He didn't forget me. He didn't forget you. He stepped into this world, became one of us, for us. For a world that doesn't deserve His mercy, He came anyway. He came to heal our broken world. That's what today is about! Today is about the savior of the world being born into our world to being an be the example of love, hope, peace, and joy. And knowing that brings me peace this Christmas day.
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I know no one wants to talk about 2020 anymore, but we're going to for a minute.
When everything fell apart, I wasn't okay. That spring and summer were times I spent working from home, sitting in an uncomfortable dining room chair with a laptop infront of me and watching the hours crawl by. I stopped taking care of myself. I ate just because I needed to in order to survive. I barely drank water. I didn't have a routine. It took everything in me to roll out of bed for a Zoom meeting while we all worked from home. It took everything in me to so much as look outside because I surely couldn't go outside. That year, I felt alone. I was forced into uncomfortable and toxic situations. I worked from home. The only real rejuvenation I felt was when I got to sit outside with my bible study, a group of beautiful women I now feel can see me (and every ugly inch of my heartache). Once summer ended and things looked like they would be normal, I felt almost okay. Almost. Then we had to work from home again and so many people that I care so deeply about expressed concern for my mental health. They had seen through the walls I thought I had constructed to hide myself behind. So, I told myself I would never feel like that again. I started going to counseling. I started drinking water again. I made sure to go outside every day. I started prioritizing the people who I knew were life-giving and not those who drained me. I started diving more into the Word. I started letting myself feel again. I am an emotional person. I can cry at the drop of a hat (or a supermarket opening, as my wonderful grandmother would have said). As I forced myself to pick up my pieces and start handing them back to Jesus, I found myself healing. Again. But through it all, the heartbreak, the falling to my knees and weeping, the feeling like my faith is a slippery slope I just can't hold on to, even though the spiritual warfare I can feel right now, I have had God. I have always known He's there, even if I can't hear Him. I tend to notice Him most when I am at my breaking point. This blog is something I know He has called me to do for, uh, years. Y E A R S. Enough about me. More of Him. |