It's Christmas-time and it IS suppose to be "the most wonderful time of the year," just as the traditional Christmas song states! For so many, it can often be the most dreaded time of the year because it can be a time of year of sobering reminders where the focal point can be of loved ones we're missing, painful childhood memories, being alone and not having loved one's to spend Christmas with, and in these difficult economic times where so many are jobless or recovering from recent job loss or change in some way, it can be a painful awareness that there isn't an abundance of funds for gift giving. We can quickly become overwhelmed and discouraged by the growing "to do" list that seems to come along with this season of Christmas decorating, baking, shopping, wrapping, parties, traveling, church activities, etc. I am here to encourage you friends that YOU CAN WALK IN VICTORY and experience true joy during CHRISTMAS!!
Believe me, as many of you who have walked the journey called life faithfully at my side know (and those of you who don't personally know me since I have readers all over the country - in future posts I plan to share many of my life testimonies), I can personally and genuinely relate to years of not walking in victory and lacking joy at Christmas-time.
My parents are my biggest fans and supporters of my ministry and faithful readers of this blog ministry and both have released me and given me permission to share anything I would like to share for the greater purpose of using our life experiences to minister to another hurting human being! So that said, in encouraging someone who perhaps can relate, in a manner of also being sensitive to and protecting my parents' confidentiality, I will share.
As a child, there were seasons of plenty and of want. We were often in want and mom could often be found on Christmas Eve all hours of the night frantically buying our entire Christmas at the eleventh hour and often writing a check that could hopefully be covered by dad's paycheck that would come several days later. Christmas was often a turbulent season. Dad had grown up in a home where alcohol and abuse reigned. Add that to the tragedy he had experienced in losing his brother to a motorcycle accident, and Christmas was an extraordinarily difficult time of year for him. Funny in life how those things have a way of being passed down from generation to generation. But the buck stops there! No longer will we pass painful childhood experiences down to the next generation because together we are going to learn to walk in victory over this generational curse! Dad is ok with me sharing some of his story as part of my testimony because that was then and this is now and it is no longer what defines who he is or the nature of our relationship today! In the spirit of protecting his confidentiality, I don't feel it's necessary to share the details, but in a nutshell, Christmas-time as a child in our household many years could look strikingly reminiscent of dad's environment growing up. Not that it was like that every year. I also have wonderful Christmas memories as a child! We did the best with what we had and mom and dad tried the best they could.
I have a new appreciation now as a parent myself. Being a parent is the hardest job on earth, especially without proper training and guidance, there is no instruction manual, and combine that with what we contribute to the equation from our own life experiences of being parented and it is difficult. So to divert a little, if that describes your childhood, today is a defining moment in your life and can be a defining moment in your relationship with your parents. Be loosed and released to walk in victory and do the same for your parents. Loose them and release them from guilt and condemnation! Trust me, they know. They live with the painful memories of all of their failures on a daily basis. They don't need for us to carry it along with them. All of our children will likely be in therapy one day working through our not being "perfect" parents! :) Because it IS the hardest job on earth and one that doesn't come with a great deal of instruction other than what was modeled for us, I assure you, we will all mess up in the parenting arena! Isn't that good news?! :) The good news is that we're gonna talk alot about parenting through this ministry and you will have access to the instruction manual you need to walk in victory in parenting as well. For now, the first step is to release any childhood experiences (and release your parents as well) of all that causes you to walk defeated, have a toxic overflow into every area of your life including what you are passing down and modeling for your children or future children, and robbing you like a thief in the night of all of the joy and abudant life intended for you! Today is a new day and there are mercies new for you for today. Guess what? There will be fresh mercies tomorrow too! For that matter, we are promised that there will be new mercies each and every single day! So the good news is, you don't have to be anxious about tomorrow's worries. Rest assured, tomorrow will have enough worries of it's own! :) Live in the moment of each day, each hour, each minute, and receive the grace and mercy available to you moment by moment! With that promise, you CAN extend forgiveness, even if it isn't asked for! You CAN release painful memories and you CAN release your parents (or whoever it is) from condemnation! You CAN start over right now in this moment and redefine the nature of your relationships with your parents, your enemy's, and you CAN redefine how you will walk in victory and joy this Christmas forward and if you are a parent, how you will redefine this experience for your children and generations to come.
For some of you, this time of year can be a time of the extraordinary sting of grief. Oh precious friend, how I can personally relate to that gut wrenching pain like no other in more ways than one. Many of you know of the tragedy that struck a small town in upstate New York 16 years ago through our family. The type of tragedy that makes headline news on TV and newspapers, causes grief counselors to be deployed in the local school system, and a funeral reception line blocks if not miles long! I share those facts not to make the sting my family experienced seem any more significant that the grief many of you have experienced but to emphasize my friend that we WERE the family you would hear of on the news and say to yourself, "that's unspeakable, I cannot fathom" and if we can overcome, ANYONE, even YOU, can overcome, no matter how horrific the circumstances!
When the Amtrak train struck and killed my 19 year old brother 2 months prior to his high school graduation on April 28, 1994, Christmas joy was robbed like an unexpected thief in the night. No Christmas has ever been the same without my brother Greg as part of the family around the Christmas tree, especially for my mother and father. I’m here to tell you, it may not seem it now but you will come through to the other side and although life will never look the same, it will continue and you will be stronger for it. First of all, I want to release you to grieve. It’s ok, it’s fully expected and acceptable. Don't apologize for it, don't prevent it or hide it. It’s part of a process and to be honest, it can take a long time, often many years. And although, grief never fully loses it’s sting, it does become less intense in time. So give yourself the time necessary, take it one day at a time, never looking too far ahead or too far behind, receive the mercy and grace new for that day. In the process, the best medicine for grief is thankfulness. Consider all you have to be grateful for each day, be creative if necessary. We all have something. Reflect on one way that you can include your loved one in your continued traditions. Because you do need to continue. For the sake of other children, other family members, etc. Especially if they are being affected by the loss as well. It’s important that they feel some sense of normalcy and continuity in the uncertainty. And never allow the memory of the loved one who has gone before us to be in vain. They are worth carrying on their legacy! Find a tangible way to carry on their name! Even in hanging a special ornament on the tree in their honor. Celebrate their life, talk about their memory, share a funny story or fond memory that brings laughter and joy. Cry, laugh, love - it's good for and nourishment to the wounded soul!
Maybe you’re experiencing “grief” not from the standpoint of permanent loss, but temporary separation. Oh how I know that pain as well. When I lost cutody of my son (a statement that's difficult for the pride of a mother to state just as that without adding any further details but since this post is becoming long enough, I will have to swallow my pride and leave as that for now and I will eventually share the details of in the near future). For the sake of time now and to share just enough to link arms with you that I KNOW this pain, I was separated from my son for 8 long years, and as if Christmas were not already difficult enough due to all of the above circumstances, it went from being difficult to near unbearable. There were days, I literally wanted to die! A self induced coma that could just make me sleep through the pain of it and wake me when it was all over, would have been the preferable choice, but as far as I know, there is no such coping mechanism common to man to date. So I had to do what many of us have to do. We just have to feel the sting and pain of it and get through it the best we can. Friend, don't do that! Don't just survive the best you can! Friend, I know all too well, it was hard to put Zachary's home-made ornaments he had made me on the tree, to see his name on his stocking hung on the fireplace mantel and he wasn’t there, to "celebrate" all of our normal family traditions. There's a void in your heart, in the very depth of your soul that nothing can seem to replace and if that weren't enough, you almost guilt yourself for experiencing any sort of joy or celebration in their absence. Looking back now on the other side of this trial, I regret all of the years I did that! It was enough that I had lost 8 years, 8 Christmas' without my son, but worse yet, I lost 8 years with my husband and other 3 children in the process because I was just going through the motions, just surviving, and not walking in the fullness of joy with all that God did sovereignly allow me to have during those 8 years. I became consumed by the one thing He did not allow me to have (not that it wasn't an important thing to have - it was my child), but being consumed by the one thing I couldn't have robbed me of all of the abundant life He did allow me to have and what saddens me more to this day is how my focus on the one thing I couldn't have, robbed my husband and other 3 children of the abundant life they should have had with a wife and mother who barely smiled for 8 long years! So as I stated above, allow yourself to grieve, allow yourself to miss em, carry on their memory and legacy, enjoy the fullness in all that you've been given, give your other family members the gift of stregnth, joy, continuity, model for them how to walk in joy and victory even in difficult circumstances, and stand in confidence and hope that even though it seems like a lifetime in the moment, in a very short time, you will be reunited with that loved one after a time of temporary seperation. Do something in a step of faith in action that will also bring joy. Place a Christmas gift or note, something tangible, in a box with that loved one's name on it. Over the years, that box will grow and one joyous day when you are reunited, you can present them with that box (or whatever it is you chose that is significant and has meaning to YOU)! Not only can you open together and reflect together, but it means so much to the loved one from which you were seperated to know that in every season, they were remembered, loved, and cherished with hope and joy and faith that one day you would be together again!
When you have done all you can do to stand friend, and still find it difficult to walk in victory, then you have to trust that you have done all you're called to do, and call on the ONE greater who is right there alongside you, who desires and promises to carry your burdens for you if you would chose to lay them at His feet. Our burdens are heavy but His yoke is light. Burdens such as these are best delegated to the One who will bear them in our place. If He bore and endured the pain of the cross in your place brother and sisters, how much more will He also bear and endure the pains of this world in your place? He who did not spare His one and only Son, but gave Him up, FOR YOU & ME, in our place, how much more will He also give for you? Do you even comprehend the power in that statement. My parents did not have an option in chosing to give up their son, niether did I (it became a choice I surrendered to but not my choice), but this ONE I speak of, CHOSE to crucify His one and only Son in your place. Ponder that for a moment. He loves you that much! Friends as a mother of 4 that are just absolutely precious to me, there is no way to articulate the love I have for them, when I digest the theory of what my personal Lord and Savior sacrificed for me, I cannot help but love Him back, desire to live for Him, and call upon Him to help me endure the pains of this world that I by myself cannot carry. There's no other formula to truly walk in victory over those unfathomables. I've tried many, none have "worked" for me. It is absolutely necessary if there is any hope of walking in victory and who wants to walk around in defeat?! It's not fun! It's far more "fun" to walk with HIM and in the fullness of life and victory! When there is no explanation to the unspeakables in life, we have to trust that we live in a fallen world in all of it's imperfection and consumed with sin and the error of man's ways, we have to trust that His ways are higher than our ways. My Pastor recently made this statement and it was substantial to me. Perhaps because in my limited intellect I need things to be very color by number! :) God has a bird's eye view unlike ours. If our lives were a parade, He sees beginning of parade from end and all floats in between. With our limited view, we only see the parts in our limited view. We see only as far as our human eye allows us to see. We have to trust God for all of the "floats" in between that we cannot see and trust that He knows the end of the parade. He promises not to give us more than we can bear. That's a tough concept for me quite honestly. There were days in all of the trials I have been through that felt like more than I could bear. I even told Him so - "God, this feels like more than I can bear, but you promised you wouldn't give me more than I can bear, you're not a liar, you're God, so I'm gonna have to trust that I can't rely on my feelings and what this "feels" like right now in this moment and trust that you're God and I'm not and you know what you're doing even if I would chose to have it done differently!" How many of you know that you can talk to Him just like that? This should be a best friend relationship and He desires for you to talk to Him just like He is your best friend. In the end, His Word promises that ALL THINGS (not just the easy things), ALL THINGS work together for the good of those who love Him. What a profound statement. It releases us from needing to understand why or how or where or when or to what extent! All we need to do is trust that He promises that this horrific thing I'm going through will eventually work out for my good and for His greater purpose. Friends, what my family experienced with the tragedy of my brother's death has never "felt" good! I'm not gonna lie! I wish His purposes could have been accomplished a different way. But I'm not God, I don't hold the outcome of the entire world in the palm of my hands, I don't see the beginning of the parade from the end and all of the floats in between. I can tell you that as difficult as it has been, it has been for my good, for the good of all of those involved, and I can't even count the number of lives that have been changed by it and that will be in the future (there you go, my good and HIS greater purpose)! His word never returns void!
So I ask you, what are you gonna do with those hurts this Christmas season? Are you gonna walk in defeat or victory? What area of life, what hurt is defining you that you need to release and deligate onto his shoulders? He'll carry it, will you let Him? What part of your life is He trying to get into? He wants all of it. What part won't you surrender? Let me ask you this...why not? Is it really benefitting you to hold on to it? Is it truly bringing you so much joy and victory that you couldn't just - let it go? How does God wanna work IN you and THROUGH you and will you be a vessel, an instrument in His sovereign hands? How can you carry on that loved one's legacy with true joy in your heart? Joy unspeakable, unexplainable, the type that causes other's to question, "How does he/she get that? I want what they have!" I could go on and on. Haven't I proven that?! :) I'm not gonna apologize for it. This topic was just way too deep, way too important to be concerned about legnth or time. This keyboard is my instrument and all He requires that I do is put my fingers to it. He does the rest! I'm trusting whatever was spoken, was for a reason. Someone needed to know. Someone is getting ready to be unleashed to WALK IN VICTORY this Christmas!! If you have questions specific to your particular circumstances or a struggle you're just not walking in victory over or something I've said just doesn't make sense, I am more than happy to minister to you individually. Feel free to send me a comment or email and although I do not claim to be an expert, I can promise you that I will do my very best to walk alongside you - in victory!! Now go - you have a lot of work to do - it's time to re-invent Christmas joy!
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