This is our fifth holiday season
as a family of four. The fifth year we will sit around our oversized farm table
with room enough for eight and realize one of those chairs will remain empty. The
fifth year I will hang Woody’s stocking without stuffing it until it overflows
with silly little gifts and his favorite treats. The fifth year…
Shouldn’t I be used to it by now?
Shouldn’t I be over it? Maybe, but something about knowing this is the fifth
time around the sun since our last holiday season with Woody makes it feel so
final and devastating. I feel completely drained—exhausted, really—as we round
the bend to another season of thanksgiving and joy.
Do not misunderstand me. I am
thankful, and God’s joy fuels me daily. However, sometimes I am angry, angry at
Woody for leaving; angry at the pain my children still endure; angry that my
life is nothing like I envisioned it
would be as I journey through middle-adulthood. So many transitions have occurred
during 2019, and as 2020 begins to introduce itself I want to run and hide. I’m
tired of trying.
Yet, during those moments of
weakness, when my weary soul feels as if it cannot take another step, God
gently lifts me from the floor into His loving arms and breathes into me the strength
necessary for another day. And because He is faithful I know somehow, some way,
we will survive the fifth holiday season
