Tis The Season.

*Photo by the amazing Erica Bartel

We fight desperately for the unique connection that comes with the Christmas holiday.  Imagery and hope fill us, until reality and tension leave us clenching to an ever shortening rope that unravels somewhere between Christmas and New Year.

Chastened to enjoy the moment while commitments and need bang relentlessly at our already overwhelmed door.  As deeply as I long to be present, I equally want to fill my cocoa with too much schnapps and pass out under the lopsided tree.

Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook show me the perfect skill of my contemporaries, the unrivaled perfection of their all together home and lives.  Their houses decorated with light and charm, their children coordinated and smiling gleefully for the camera.  I trip over legos, scold my children, and bake half burned cookies, the frosting turns to an interesting state of brown after all of the colors are mixed together while my back is turned.

Christmas.  Joy.  Peace.  Harmony.

Or is it Chaos.  Tension.  Stress.

The well meaning will encourage us to enjoy the moments, their pressing guilt fills us with shame that perhaps we aren't valuing the hand holding and joy filled eyes enough.  If you are like me, you cuddled close to whichever sleepy head found your lap in the wee hours when dawn has not fully broken forth and your tree twinkles it's glistening lights, hot coffee in your hand, and this moment is the heart clenching breath of I love you mommy.  Only for the light to break free from the nights hold and suddenly it's shrieks of we're going to be late, get dressed, leave the ornaments on the tree, stop unwrapping the gifts, stop eating the advent candy.

Because life is not a succession of picture perfect moments.  It is in the chaos, the stress, the wild unnecessary pressure that we find little treasures of joy and peace and perfection.   It's while the kids are screaming about hating cutting down the tree that we laugh and run and smile.  It's the memories built over cups of cocoa and weary hearts finding each other in the midst of this ever changing world.  It's laughing at twinkling lights while we drive around in our old car, the heat fogging the windows.  It is the breathless I love you after chase and anger.  It's forgiveness and gentleness.

Enjoy this holiday, your winter season.  Enjoy the perfect in the middle of the ridiculous.  Smile at a stranger, give whole heartedly.  No matter how desperate we are to cling to this season, we will fall into moments of stress, frustration, and guilt.  Let it go.  Breathe deep and look into dark eyes that are pushing tacks into the hot cookies you just baked to take to the dessert auction.  Then laugh and maybe take a sip of schnapps.

Already Passing.

photo by the amazing David Walden.

Quietly it falls, fluttering to the earth.  Leaves drop from the trees, leaving an empty waste of darkened branches slashed against a misted sky.  Winter comes in it's biting cold, vicious in it's brevity, to heighten the intense pleasure that comes at the warming dew of spring.

We can get lost in the winter, the short, lonely days, huddled at home, waiting for the end.  Forgetting that this is only a season, we begin to submerge ourselves in the discouragement of time.  Longing for the moment we can emerge.  To rid ourselves of the weight of coats and layers, to leap through green meadows, breathing the flower scented air.

It will end.  Pain, loneliness, heartbreak, sadness, will end.  They come in their seasons.  They come hard and quick, before you fully realize you're pushed under the weight.  There are times when it can seem to last an eternity.  When you forget who you were, when everything in life was right.  When every day was like music and you danced your way through.

A friend wrote a great post on this.  Charis Scofield.  She has such a way with words, with perspective.  You should read it.  Remind yourself that wherever you find yourself, it is a fleeting moment.

The hard times can be treasured, they enrich who we are.  The interludes of beauty are those that allow us to live out of the depths that life has carved for us.  When we're able to reminisce and enjoy the sweet reprieve that is just a moment away.



Even in winter is joy.  Christmas comes and snow.  Light steals it's way in and refreshing good happens when you're least expecting.  The cardinal comes to rest on the stark branch, the early morning frost turns the world to glass, the smoke curling from a chimney.

Immerse yourself where you are.  Remember it is already passing.  Today will never come again.  Embrace it, fill yourself on it.  Breathe it deep.  Stare at life as you live, wildly abandoned to it.