Waking the day after Christmas I looked in the mirror and the face I saw was of someone who has been through a hard fought battle. I am still here, alive.
I slept 24 hours through Christmas.
I hear so many preachers teach putting things away from your past using Paul’s comments about the garbage of works ( Philippians 3:7-8), or Jesus heals everything you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Others say, “Stop thinking about it and get on with what is happening today.”
My mom lived this and she raised me saying,”Life happens, your alive so keep moving.” What she did in practice is stuff everything.
When I returned to college my sophomore year my suite mate told me, “If you don’t get counseling you will end up a wicked old witch.”
The next thing I did was find the counseling in student health. After 6 months of listening to a man on the far end of the room, I came away with 2 facts. I still loved my dad (Rich) and healing will come if I get mad instead of becoming depressed.
The realization that I Loved Dad no matter what he did was hard to comprehend. But it didn’t take long for me to use the advice of using anger to expel the emotion instead of internalize it and get depressed with thoughts of what garbage I was.
Many times I have paid a counselor but most of the time it has been the Great Counselor, Holy Spirit who has taken me through the healing. This year I was taken aback. My body shut down for Christmas.
I went to bed with frustration. The oven unknowingly shut off it’s gas. This meant neither the roast nor my coffee cake could be cooked on Christmas. Who knew my coffee cake was my protection? I have made it every year since I was 9 years old save the year with the flu.
Have you ever been surprised how important some item is or the meaning connected to a tradition?
The day after Christmas I text my neighbor about using her oven, and I was shocked to have tears flow. This helped me realize the importance of Christmas with my coffee cake. They go together.
In my ninth year in life the four of us my mom, brother, and sister and I were living in an apartment after moving out of our grandparents farm,(our place of healing).
Mom said, “We are not going to open gifts until we have eaten. Justine would you like to make a coffee cake?”
Was this the reason my body shut down or does it have something to do with what happened the next year?
My tenth Christmas we were in a house with a new father, (who needed to be loved). I woke up early to sit in front of the tree and the lights. I plugged in the tree and the next thing I heard was…
“HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU! What Do you Think you Are you Doing?”
Mom appeared, “What’s going on here?”
“She isn’t old enough to plug in the lights!”
“Justine since you are up why don’t you make the coffee cake you made last year? The others will be getting up soon.”
I’m sure my mom suggested that we children have our own tree in the basement to decorate the next year, they bought a fake tree for themselves.
This scene stuck in my head and popped up every once and a while. I might have even told someone but it never was connected to emotion.
Talking about something doesn’t heal you. Healing comes when it connects to your emotions.
A friend ask, “Why couldn’t God just go down and pull up the root of all your pain.”
What I know now is my pain is weaved into every fiber of my being and if God tried to heal it all at once it would kill me. It is God’s Grace to give me what I am able to handle at the appropriate time.