Do You Remember Your Worst Christmas?
After surviving the discovery that Santa was not real, Christmases went along quite well for awhile as I continued to enjoy being surrounded by family. That was to change when my sister and I got married. We had other families to spend time with as well and so did not always manage to get everyone together anymore.
My first married Christmas was a whole new story. I was not really aware of how other families handled the season. Since my mother-in-law was widowed, and she only had one bachelor son besides my husband, so we decided that she needed us to spend Christmas with her instead of with my family. I thought she would be lonely otherwise because I equated Christmas happiness then with being with the entire family.
We were still in university at the time and I was only 21 years old. We drove 'home' to her house and got there on Christmas eve before she arrived home from work. When I walked in the door I was overwhelmed with the emptiness. There was not a Christmas decoration in sight! When she got home she was all tired and crabby and complaining about Christmas.She was not one for music either, so the house was silent. Not even a Christmas cookie to be found.
We had a wonderful dinner on Christmas day (she was a fabulous cook) but that was about as far as it went. There was no more family, no one dropping in, no fun at all. I felt like crying all day. (This in itself tells you that I had as yet in my young life experienced none of life's much greater sorrows.)I realized at that point that to me Christmas was being with family, it had nothing to do with presents at all. How I missed my family that day.
The following year my mom invited my mother-in-law and brother-in-law to join all of us for Christmas. At least I got be with my own family again, but my Christmases were never quite the same after that.
But how could it be?
Children grow up and move, things change, they must. That's just life.
We must move through the stages, learning as much as we can from each of them establishing new ways of doing things that suit for awhile and then making changes again where necessary.
Now, after sharing my most disappointing Christmas with you, tomorrow I will tell you about the best Christmas surprise ever!
Do you remember a particularly disappointing Christmas or would you rather not even go there?
For a dose of laughter medicine click here.
May Dipsy Doodling Around Depression
be better than a therapy session!
Don't give up,
I'm praying for you....
Wendy Love
3 comments:
I know what the surprise is!!
Dear Wendy,
I hesitate to bring it up, it's so depressing. But my most memorably worst Christmas was when I was too sick to come home and I had to stay in the mental hospital where I had been for a few months. No one came to visit me that day. No gifts except an old fashioned string of beads that had been donated to the hospital for a gift. I never wore it. Might have been better not to have received it.
But there was a silver lining. Something else I remember from that day. Since there were only a few patients there that day, the nurses took extra time with us. I remember one of them opening the window where the seagulls were crying, trying to get into the garbage bags piled below. She gave me some bread to hold out to the seagulls, reaching out from the barred windows. I remember the joy of the breath of fresh air and of the seagulls taking the bread from my hand. Me a prisoner, feeding the free birds. A poignant memory.
But it's not too depressing a memory. It gives me cause to be thankful for how much my life has improved since those days. How much I have today to be thankful for!
Blessings,
marja
Marja,
Thank you for sharing that personal memory during such a dark time in your life. Thank you also for showing the light in the darkness. That was clearly a vivid memory for you. There is something about birds isn't there? God has often used birds to touch me. I am glad this Christmas is clearly going to be a much brighter one for you!
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