Christmas & Approaching the Final Firsts

I've had many people reach out and let me know they're praying for us, and especially Kevin and the kids, as we head into Christmas and then January. I am deeply appreciative of your thoughtfulness and prayers. Thank you. 

To be honest, I didn't anticipate that Christmas, as a holiday, would be a particularly difficult milestone for me personally (I can't speak for the Keiser family). Approaching Easter felt monumentally impossible due to its proximity to Heidi's death, it being our first major holiday, and most significantly its very nature as the celebration of the Resurrection. ...and yet we made it through.

However, I was surprised as I broke into tears throughout the day on Christmas Eve, recalling that last year's Christmas was the final time Heidi and I spoke together, I saw her smile, heard her laugh, and felt her hug goodbye. All of the unanswerable whys, what ifs, if onlys, pummeled me all day long, and the day felt like a crucible through mental hurdles of sorrow. On top of grief, the last months have been a test of one fairly minor physical discomfort on top of another, limiting my capacity. All of this piled on as the day progressed, and I felt exhausted on every front. 

As God has done in the past, he waited until I was at the Christmas Vigil Mass to remind me of what is more deeply true than my grief, discomfort, and anxiety: I am called to cling to the grace he is offering me. He reminded of my closeness to St. Joan of Arc last January, and how he was still holding out that grace to me, to be a warrior for his love. The memories, physical discomforts, and anxieties that the days ahead might bring had obscured my mission. 

Nonetheless, I can't help but laugh at the thought of me as a warrior for anything, much less love. I must be one of the weakest people I know. I am no warrior. But perhaps in me he is doing what he loves to do, and using the weak...

As I sat there in Mass, I felt him whispering the invitation to lift my head, dust myself off, cling to him, and raise again the standard of his love. Receiving the Eucharist that evening was a particularly  beautiful moment: divine life filling my soul. It didn't take away my aches and pains, remove grief, or answer the questions that linger about our future, but it offered all that I truly need as he filled me with himself and reoriented my gaze back to his heart. 

I don't know what January and its final and hardest season of first anniversaries will be like for us. Through the past year I have found that anticipation has always been worse than reality. There's a popular saying, at least in my circles, that there is only grace for the present moment/for today. Today I choose God. I choose love. I choose grace. I choose to offer my weakness as a happy challenge to see what he will make of it. Come Holy Spirit. 

Thank you so much for all your kind words, remembrance of us, and prayers as we approach January. Please keep them coming!

P.S. Christmas found me giggling up a storm with Meg & Felicity. Others being occupied with other things, I found myself on toddler duty and delighted in the simple joy of their enthusiastic demands of "again!" as I sang, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes umpteen times, between their offers of pretend treats from the play kitchen. It was a highlight of my day. 

Having stayed up past midnight after the Christmas Vigil Mass, Felicity was unconvinced that even 10pm was an acceptable Christmas Day bedtime, so she and I read and read and read until she was in a hilarious drunken stupor of exhaustion and ready to admit defeat. Merry Christmas!