Different Christmas.
There is something Different about Christmas this year. Change is in the air and I wonder that Different won’t become the theme of our lives.
All of us have learned something about life since the bottom dropped out of the economy. We, hopefully, will never live the same way again.
At the Dancer house the change hit home when our youngest, Jess left in my car for the coast to visit the new, most important person in his life. What happened to the day when Kathy and I were the one’s he spent Christmas with? I miss him already but we love his new girlfriend Kirty and all that she adds to our family.
Another huge Difference is my mom is home for Christmas, but that means I can’t see her. She died in March of this year so it’s the first time in my 51 ½ years on this earth that we’ve been apart for the holiday. I still have the stocking she made me for my first Christmas.
A cancer diagnosis last January makes this Christmas Different too. Somehow when you see the end it gives you the choice of finding a new beginning. Our small Christmas Eve with our family grew into a party of friends, food, drink and a dance lesson courtesy of Xbox.
Change is not easy but necessary. Different takes getting used to. Sadness, in small doses, is just part of life. So, Kathy, Jake and I will put on our new Christmas stuff, head to a movie, go say hi to Kathy’s brother Chip, come home and have a nice dinner together.
We will mix tradition, the familiar and different creating a new reality.
Life is not a chapter in a book that you read over and over again. Sometimes, as you write the story of your life you must put a period at the end of a chapter and move on. So, turn the page and allow what was and what is to become what can be.
Merry Christmas
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So true about the changes. I’ve fixed a family Christmas breakfast for the last probably 20 years. It started as just the four of us, our time apart from all the rest of the hub bub. Our little intimate “family” time. Now, with our daughter married and the necessary “sharing” of holidays, we have chosen to roll with it and have started having our parents, our son and some friends we know. So what was smaller and inward has changed, morphed and grown to something larger and different. And something good.
It might be an oxymoron, but we have a “new tradition”.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, Rick and thank you for sharing your journey, your cancer battle and travels with Christ. I learn from them and they have given me strength, opening horizons and allowing me to see with a clearer vision.
Change, unexpected at the time and not so unexpected in reality, had been the theme of our lives this year. At 50, Dan is on total disability due to an auto-immune disorder called “Sjogren’s Syndrome.” It’s not easy making a decision that changes everything, everything that is except your faith in the Lord Jesus. Change is hard, in fact, just getting use to the idea of change is just as difficult. From the very beginning we asked to Lord to be with us, two scriptures from Proverbs have made this year a year without worry, a year of contentment and joy, one of peace and a prosperity of a different kind. “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed; In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” Our faith has never wavered because the Lord has directed our path in every fork in the road. We have been so blessed. We now look forward to the new year and the changes the Lord will make in our lives.
Rick, you are so wise. Thank you for sharing. I have become the most hum bug person there is. In the past 4 years, both my husband and I became disabled and my illnesses, the list keeps growing; we lost both of my husbands parents a year apart (3/08 and 4/09) (one of them while I was transported to the hospital non-responsive, flatlined (had the opportunity to “go home”) and revived; my middle son is not speaking to me; my oldest son is barely heard from, says he doesn’t have time; finances living on SSD are challenging to say the least; living with undescribable pain 24/7; etc. etc. etc. Your article challenged me to take time to pray, ask for guidance, and then make a list of the positive things in life and things we can still do to enjoy life (holidays, etc.). It will still be one day at a time, depending on health issues each day, but I now have a list, goals, ideas for helping others, etc. A plan to make “new traditions” and different (positive) choices. Thank you for being an instrument for the Lord to work through to help me. You have done so oh so many times. I miss our one-on-one talks when we worked together. You are and will always be a special friend. Love to you and your family, Stacie.