Greeted with painful texts this morning. Yet ANOTHER friend’s husband has Covid. A friend whose mom was just diagnosed with cancer. A friend whose son is struggling spiritually. A friend who is adopting her grandchild. And so on…
A friend commented that Christmas is a week away and she’s not ready, there’s too much to do.
My own to-do list is empty, but my emotional list is full. With Howard in Heaven, the kids have different needs. One wants all the same traditions. One does not. I’m Mom in the middle.
I watched a movie last night (Love Hard), which was pretty cute, but not just a few minutes into it, they quoted a Shel Silverstein poem and I totally lost it. I mean, it was definitely a Hallmark-type Christmas movie on Netflix where I was supposed to cry. But, the crying usually happens at the end, not the beginning. So, I’m a sloppy mess and had to stop the movie to get tissues and google the poem.
But, because I obsessively share my life on social media, I then had to share the poem, and find and post a picture of Shel with it. And, I realized I was crying for the wrong reason because the poem didn’t mean what I thought it meant, because frankly I’m not that into poetry, and this was just fifteen minutes of my last night.
No wonder I made a martini!
And, martinis don’t eradicate the pain. We suffer. We grieve. We worry. We long.
Bleak are the days. Joy is marred like faded tinsel. We pray for those we love who hurt and mourn and yearn. And, we comfort each other. And, we pray some more.
And, yet all of our prayers have been answered because 2000 years ago, a baby was born in Bethlehem.