Happy Christmas????

Today is Christmas Day, the first day of the Christmas season. I am doing something I have never done before. 

Several weeks ago I claimed the need to spend a few days alone. This works well in my family's practice as my husband, children and I have for the last 13 years exchanged our presents as the four of us on Christmas Eve. This practice simplified travel as we have traveled to one side of the family or the other on Christmas Day morning all but three of those years. We never did "Santa" like many families, so it didn't matter.

My husband and kids got up this morning and went to my in-laws for a few days. I get to stay home with my dog. And I am currently listening to geese flying across the river with my dog asleep on the chair beside me.

I needed space to grieve. I needed to be alone. I needed to think about all the people and things that I have lost and feel the absence. I needed to claim the very many ways that this Christmas is so very different from every one that has gone before.

There is an emptiness and a silence in my heart. It is actual physical pain in my chest. I want to cry, but rarely can. 

This year, all that has been lost is heavy. It's family who celebrate on another shore, my job and vocation, my first dog, a close friendship that has ended. I have lost the rhythm of my doctoral classes and the regular connection with colleagues and the learning we shared.

So, to grieve and claim the heaviness that weighs on me from those empty places and loses, I needed to be alone.

I pray that if any of you are reading these ramblings penned here at River View Center and you are aching this Christmas, that you will find strength in knowing you do not hurt alone. There are many of us deeply hurting this year.