Learning to Walk Again...: Today I'm Home For Christmas

Merry Christmas!

It doesn't really feel like Christmas this year... I know people say that every year.. but it's really true for Trev and I.
We are in BC.. Our families are in Alberta and Manitoba. We have never not spent Christmas with one of our families... feels weird.

We have both been saying (in the weeks leading up to this day) that we are so excited to have a quiet Christmas. Watch Home Alone 2, sleep in (I'm up writing this at 7:30 AM.....) drink Tea, cook a small meal (Trev is cooking his Grandpa's stuffed Pork tenderloin, remembering Grandpa Lewis today,) just lounge around.

The truth is... I miss family. I miss the gathering of Christmas. I miss Trev's dad's Christmas breakfast omelets, gingerbread houses, watching everyone open gifts, a Christmas tree, and lights. I wish I could watch the kids open presents, hug my dad, listen to Bob and Judy's stories behind each Christmas ornament, sit with Grannie and chat about nothing and everything.

Our blue and red spider man tree

Gingerbread house... Trevor always adds something inappropriate!

Christmas 2005... He looks so little!

Christmas breakfast with our family (and Daniel!!)

There are things I don't miss... The business, the stressful "perfect gift", the alcohol centered parties and events, snow... (ya I said it... I don't miss the snow!!)
I also don't miss the feeling of having to be "on" around family and friends. The feeling of not quite being able to be my true self.....
Sadly, I don't have that freedom with anyone but Trevor... and that makes me very thankful for Home this year... (Our BC home)

Home, a place where you can be you. Fully you.
Like yesterday, for some reason on Christmas Eve... I was in a rotten mood (gasp). I was tired and crying and getting super agitated by everything (I think its that time of the month approaching..) Trev and I fought in Safeway... like a big one, where I walked (briskly) ten feet ahead of him, and where I stared out the passenger side window all the way home in silence. We spent more than an hour at home talking/arguing/crying(K, that was just me)

My point is, it may not have been the perfect Christmas Eve (the one I had been planning for)... but it was real, it was definitely raw, and it was home....

It's Home!
I didn't have to hide, fake being super joyful and triumphant... I was me.

Pastor John spoke last night about the stable that Jesus was born into. He spoke about it being dark, cold and smelly and dirty.... The things we don't think of when we romanticise the story.
He asked, Why would God send His own son (who deserved the life of a king) to a gross stable to be born?

Then Pastor John went on to say something that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

It's because, the stable is often like our hearts and lives.

Dark - Hiding the things and parts of our lives that we want no one to see
Cold - Void of God's Love, and unable to truly give Love
Smelly and dirty - from the stench and mess of our sins. Our attempts to "be a good or better person", the things that we run to to give us life, but only bring more sorrow. The messes we make when we take the reigns of our own lives.

Jesus comes into the stable of our lives

Emanuel... God with us

He's here with me, when I'm angry and its Christmas (and your not supposed to be angry on Christmas!) He's here when I'm empty and searching for something to give me life..(in all the wrong places!) He's here with me when I'm horribly insecure and unloving and tremendously disrespectful to my husband. He's come to our home, inhabited by two people with a growing, but still small ability to truly love the other. He comes into the center of my messy, self righteous, striving, filthy rags of a life.

He comes as my Savior

because whether I will always admit it or not...

I desperately need one.

Home Alone 1 on Christmas Eve

Candlelight service (Right before Trevor snapped his candle...)

My gift to Trev. A German beer stein that says "There is no beer in Heaven, that's why I drink it here on earth"

Omelets... Guess who's is who's??

After our fight, Trevor and I joined hands and prayed for Jesus to be the center of our marriage (that is sometimes cold) To in the very middle of our home (which despite our efforts to hide, and quick cleans.... is sometimes dirty and smelly) We asked Him to change us... save us.... Not because we are super spiritual....ha! We joined hands and prayed, because we are desperate for a Savior.