A Season to Hold Space

If there was ever a season that I felt more bipolar… it is the holiday season.

I LOVE the holidays. LOVE. THEM. I lit a candle yesterday and I could taste Christmas. We’ve got a long to-do list of Thanksgiving preparations today and I cannot WAIT for tomorrow’s festivities. And within these moments of excitement, I sometimes find myself crying.

On Sunday, the pastor spoke about broken dreams. If I’m being honest, it took me a little bit to connect because I am literally knee-deep in following my DREAM right now. Then in conversation with a friend yesterday, she pointed out that my ideal holiday dream is broken, and it can’t be fixed.

My ideal Thanksgiving… football late morning with friends and family (touch for the most part, but I am not opposed to tackling some of the younger people), and then family hanging out all day and us eating loads of delicious food. People napping on the couches and in the beds and then watching a Christmas movie.

I’ve never put words to it before. I want that so bad.

But… we’re a combined family, which means our kids have another set of parents to go see. That breaks up the day. Everyone is busy, so there goes the ‘hanging out all day’. Consensus was to skip football this year… a tradition we’ve been doing for over ten years. And my dad is dead and my father-in-law is dead and my uncle is dead and my brother doesn’t speak to me and my cousins probably won’t come and my aunt has to work. And on and on and on.

I really do look forward to the holidays. To be intentionally cliche, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. I’m giving myself space to mourn the parts that hurt, the broken dream, the gut-pain of missing my dad, and also to celebrate everything else. It’s a weird space. It’s uncomfortable to be so happy and so sad at the same time.

I guess that’s life.

Hard and Easy. Comfort and Chaos. Beautiful and Broken.