[Family]
Here we go again. Is it just me, or does it feel like we had the holiday season just happened a week ago? Maybe two. As usual, the melancholy creeps on as I consider who is and who isn't here. I consider my two beautiful and intelligent children I can still hold. I reach out for my husband, and he's there. My sister moved next door just recently, so I even have extended family nearby. I have a home, good jobs, gifts and talents to share, fluffy animals to love. I'm so blessed.
Yet, as the holidays creep on, the hole in my reality is almost palpable. I've lived nine Christmases, ten if you count the one before she filled my arms, without my angel and not one with. I never got the anticipated first Christmas or second or third. As the blessings build up under the tree, as loved one pull closer, it's still hard to hear singing about babies and angels and not think of my angel baby. I know I'm not alone. Holidays tend to be hard on those in mourning, no matter whom they have lost. The presence of everyone else somehow amplifies the sense of absence.
[Baby]
Yet, Thanksgiving is for giving thanks for what and whom we still have, for the gift of time we did get with our loved ones, no matter how short that time was. It's a time for a spirit of gratitude, even for our challenges. Christmas is for celebrating the One who overcame death and sin, so we could one day live together as families forever, so we can one day be reunited and never parted again. Why is it then so hard, hurt so much? It's part of mortality. I'll try to celebrate Thanksgiving, giving thanks for my angel. I'll start my angel jar, the gift we give our angel every year. It's a jar of slips listing the gifts and service we as a family offer to others. We will celebrate the holidays as we have and celebrate the gift of our angel and all she does for us.
