Luckily, I was not a completely hopeless case. My Christmas Spirit finally showed up. It was very late, but it was there.
On Christmas Eve every year, my family goes to the 11:00 pm service at church. We go to our home church, St. Paul Lutheran Church, the years that we're at home. But this year we spent Christmas with my grandmother, so we went to St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Charlotte, NC for their late service. Normally, I love the Christmas Eve service (we had been to this church once before for Christmas Eve). But this year, I was tired and not feeling very well. This combined with my apathy toward Christmas made me pretty grumpy. But once the pastor started her sermon, I started to loosen up a bit. I love sermons in the Lutheran church because they are less about teaching the Bible and more about teaching how to use what is said in the Bible to live a more fulfilling life. The Bible is used as a guide, not as something to be taken literally (because, let's face it: a lot has changed since Jesus was walking around doing his thing). Her sermon was insightful and downright funny at times (she used anecdotes. I love anecdotes). I wish I could find the e-mail that she read to us so that I could share it with you. After the sermon, I felt myself opening up to the songs and prayers and letting my guard down. Then, as the they were preparing for communion at the altar, the church bells started ringing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." This happens to be one of my favorite Christmas songs, probably because my high school choir used it to open our big Christmas concert every year. Hearing it brings back the excitement and adrenaline rush that I always felt at the beginning of that concert. As soon as it started ringing, I looked down at my watch and realized that it was 12:00 am—officially Christmas! "Away in a Manger" followed shortly after. I loved that the church rang in Christmas like this (no pun intended)!
After communion, ushers walked down the center aisle and lit candles. Everyone passed their flame down the pew as the lights dimmed and the organist played the intro to "Silent Night." We do this at my home church as well and I always love it, but there was something extra special about this experience in this church. It was extra magical. Then on the last verse, the pastor lifted up her candle and everyone else followed suit. That, my friends, is when my Christmas spirit made its entrance. I felt warm inside and even kind of relieved. It was like we were taking whatever was hurting or stressing or saddening us and lifting it up, letting it all go. It was that moment that I remembered that Christmas is not about me. It is not about Christmas movies or Christmas cookies or even that warm and tingly feeling you get when you put a present under the tree. It's about hope. It's about the fact that however many years ago, all was not right on Earth and God sent someone down to make things better. God sent his son down as a physical manifestation of the hope he provides. For me, Christmas this year was about realizing that no matter how much pain I am in, no matter how sad I am, no matter how many tears I shed, somehow, someway, at some point, something will get better. It won't happen all at once and it is going to take time, but there will eventually be some improvement. Until then, I need to use this time for me. I need to learn patience and really think about what it means to love someone. I have absolutely no doubt that I love my ex-boyfriend, but it was never an emotion I was able to quite put into words (which I know a lot of, if not most people can't). I'm kind of figuring out what that word means to me; what loving someone means to me. Does that make any sense? Haha. And I need to learn how to take care of myself–how to make myself take care of myself. It is going to take a lot of time before I am able to open myself up to someone the way I did to my ex-boyfriend. I still can't imagine loving someone in the way that I love him. And that's ok. I probably never will love anyone else in the way that I love him because I believe that we cannot love two people in the same way. Every person is different, every relationship is different, and every love is different. Like snowflakes. When my heart is ready, I will begin to take the steps toward being able to open up again. But to pretend all is well before I am healed would be unfair to me and unfair to any man that tried to pursue a relationship with me. It is ok that I can't move on from this yet. It is difficult and painful. But it is ok.
"Give me pain if that's what's real. It's the price we pay to feel." (Brownie points if you can name that musical!)
Right now, I am just thankful that I was lucky enough to get to spend Christmas with family that gives me their love and support unconditionally—no questions asked.
Just a friendly sword fight between siblings..
See all those nutcrackers on the mantle? My cousin Kevin is obsessed with the ballet The Nutcracker and has amassed quite the collection. Here, we're trying to show him the 5 ballet positions of the feet, but he's more interested in reenacting the battle between the nutcracker and the mouse king. And he has just stabbed me. A dramatic death followed shortly after this picture was taken (cause it's not ballet if it's not dramatic!).
The Adams and Wright kids. Cool cousins.
I think we were trying to do some sort of Abbey Road thing here. As you can see, we were wildly successful.
The Wright family.
See the woman sitting on the walker? That's my great-grandmother, Nana, who celebrated her 99th Christmas this year. How amazing is that? She seen Christmas through the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties, two World Wars, Pearl Harbor, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Men on the Moon, The Gulf War, 9/11, The War on Terror and 17 presidents. The Christmases she enjoyed as a child seem almost from a completely different world than the Christmases she has now. That just completely blows my mind!
The entire Wright/Adams bunch.
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