The Magic Was for Me

It’s Christmas morning and I’m experiencing a bit of my own Christmas miracle.

I woke up early, with no alarm, and am now drinking my coffee downstairs alone. In peace.

I’m scrolling through social media and seeing videos of fellow moms exhausted from creating Christmas magic for their families and I’m grumling into my coffee cups- SAME GIRL SAME as I wonder how my body awoke at 5 am without the help of an alarm.

This year, yet again, I’ve been obsessed with creating Christmas magic. Some of it is, I’m sure, good old Eldest Daughter Syndrome creeping through. The need to have the china out since my mother was upset that I didn’t use it at Thanksgiving. Making sure the food is timed right in the oven for everyone’s arrival- it cannot be cold. Popping the champagne at the right time.

Getting kids the Christmas gifts they both verbally tell me they want and the ones they keep to themselves. (Well, it’s really more my oldest that does that.) Coming from an outstretched need to make up for the fact that fathers aren’t present, and likely never will be. 

And it’s in these moments that I realize… the Christmas magic isn’t really just for them, it’s also for me.

Christmas and the memories it brings bring a sadness. Thinking of Christmas while I was divorcing, taking my babies to see the Christmas lights at Chick Fil A because my world seemed so dark and I needed the light. Crying quietly in my car as they slept, because I couldn’t get their father to leave my parents home without doing the usual mental gymnastics. The Christmas he took them to another city outside of his parenting time and wouldn’t answer his phone- leaving me terrified that he had finally made good on his threats to disappear with them. And the next day driving 3 hours to retrieve them on virtually no sleep, to a town his family practically ran… not quite sure if I would be safe there. It may be hyperbolic but it was how I felt. He had made clear so many times that my life was not worth living. The terror instilled in me was real.

And even the Christms from last year, running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get someone I cared about to please just go to rehabilitation. While also securing my own future and applying to PhD programs.

This Christmas- the kindness of others surrounded me. I made a post on Facebook about my Pink Tree and asked if anyone knew where I could get a Shiny Brite tree topper. And someone I hadn’t seen since high school responded saying they saw one at a non-profit for saving dogs. Her mother in law, someone who does not know me, picked it up for me. Such a momentous act of kindness- not even allowing me to pay them back… just asking that I make a donation of my own. (I’m actually going to link them here and ask that y’all do the same!)

This Christmas I caught up with my family. I saw my cousin Merry for lunch, someone who I connected with thanks to Ancestry.com- a lost cousin right here in Macon. I started back an email correspondence with a cousin in Mobile. And I have plans to see another cousin for lunch this week. I realized that I have also lost some friends along the way, but I have to wonder if they were ever really and truly mine? 

This Christmas- friends from church showered my kids with gifts. We had multiple church services and food abounded. We had an amazing wine tasting and potluck party at my house. (Shout out to Allan Bass!!! Y’all be sure to hire him) People in the South often refer to their church people as their church family, and this has truly become that for me. My relationship with God has blossomed in ways that I could have never imagined and I am on my way to a more formalized role of evangelism. 

This Christmas, I will close out being a full time lecturer and move into a new job. I’ll still teach part time, but I’m excited about all of the possibilities.

This Christmas, I thought I was going to have to find a new therapist because mine moved but then he reached out to let me know he had started an online practice!! I had been truly sad at the idea of having to start that over again, there’s so much for me to have to unpack with a new one and plus the one I’ve got gets me because he used to be in the media field as well. He understands my deep need for storytelling and how all of that drives me. In the same vein, I had what should be the last court date for a court case with my ex that has been dragging on for almost six years. We’ve been divorced for twelve. More on that once the ruling comes in.

This Christmas I made a dozen trips to Lowe’s for outside lights, realizing how they looked like sparkling stars in the crepe myrtle trees. Enough that it annoyed my kids how often we went. I literally needed to create the Light from that Night. 

This Christmas magic was sorely needed even for me. And yet, even while I am safe in my own home- warmed by coffee and HVAC- I think back to the poem I wrote last night while in church.

“Away in a manger, no crib for a bed

The Little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head”

No stars in the sky

Only missiles shooting above instead

The Little Lord Jesus

No crying He makes

Asleep atop the burning rubble

In deadly Bethlehem he sleeps

Bless all the dear children

In thy tender care

Especially those that look different from us

Tonight 

When Love came down

To win the day

There is so much hurt and sadness in the world. Sometimes it feels helpless to offer prayers. I feel like we do what we can to alleviate it in our own community- my daughter and I through volunteer work… my oldest son occasionally joining in. Him with his renewed Socks in a Box project. Me with my work in our church.

Yet sometimes prayers are all that we have. A blinding cry out to God to just fix the hearts of men. The birth of a baby, whom God would give up for us – because He loved us that much. 

God from God, Light from Light… begotten not made. Of one being with the Father through Him all things are made, for us and for our salvation. This Mothering Father has offered us the way, if only we will take it.

This Christmas magic is one that I had to make not just for my kids but for me too- the twinkling lights outside my home a reminder of the one greater Star that we follow, seeking out the love that has already been given to us all.