Merry Christmas Blues

Taking a Starbucks break on our Christmas walk--thank you, husband...you are my very favorite gift.

It seems like it's hard not to feel blue about Christmas at some point.  Whether it's leading up to it...during...or the day after when it's all over.  Some part of me wonders if we're not all reaching for something that we'll never fully find until Jesus comes again.  The fullness of eternal peace, joy, and life.  Unity, family, and a home.  Maybe there's something deep within us, reminding us through some kind of longing ache, that what Jesus came to do is not quite finished yet.  There is more to the story...more to hope for...and this, as good as it is, is not as good as it gets. 

As long as there is breath inside us, there is opportunity to hope.  But hope, I find, is rather hard work.  Work enough to last me the remaining 364 days of the year.  I'll be honest, there is a part of me that is struggling to let go of this year.  So many wonderful things happened in 2009.  So many stories I had always secretly hoped for and dreamed of finally came true.  There is a part of me that does not dare to keep 'hoping forward', I guess.  It seems much safer to remain somehow stuck in time (forever teetering on that dangerous border between contentment and just plain settling).  Of course I know this is nonsense, and so rather clumsily, I will move forward with the rest of the world into a brand new year.  I will do the work of dreaming, hoping and praying...for more adventures and answers to come.

Hope is the opposite of giving up.  When I am tempted to give up (and that is much more often than I care to admit...though much less often than it used to be, I believe...), I hope I remember words like the ones I read today...

I cry out to the Lord;

I plead for the Lord's mercy.

I pour out my complaints before him

and tell him all my troubles.

When I am overwhelmed,

you alone know the way I should turn.

I look for someone to come and help me,

but no one gives me a passing thought!

......

Then I pray to you, O Lord.

I say, "You are my place of refuge.

You are all I really want in life."

-from Psalm 142-

Sometimes I feel stupid for writing the things I do.  I'm glad David didn't...or at least...didn't let it stop him.