"I will praise the one who's chosen me, to carry you"
-Selah: I will carry you

Sunday 22 December 2013

The third Christmas

I want to tell you, those of you who are not as far on their journey, it is easier this year. Or more truthfully, it isn't so painful. I haven't spent the last six weeks dreading Christmas, but nor am I looking forward to it. This year, I feel mostly apathy.  Well that's progress, right? I've put up the tree, and enjoyed with happysad tears watching Bertie make his candle dance in his excitement. I have started a new tradition of buying a toy for a disadvantaged child his age- man was that tough, and I have managed successfully for third year to get everything done early enough to avoid all the hype in town.  But I'm not excited. I am not looking forward to it, I just want it over.

I'm keeping it short and simple this year, family stuff 24th-27th then back to home turf, can do. Yep. Going to be totally fine.

Isn't it?

There's another side to it for me. This is not only the third Christmas without our son, it is also the third without the hope of a rainbow. I am telling myself for the third time, next year will be my year.....It's getting old. It's getting hard to believe. Not only do I cry over missing seeing his excitement as I turn on the tree lights, I cry as I wonder if I will ever see the excited face of my child at Christmas.  Will the only gift I will ever by for my child be decorations for a grave?

And I don't understand it. I just don't. I ask of God, wasn't taking my son enough? Why are You putting me through this torment, again and again?  People tell me I don't deserve this, and it isn't a punishment...well it sure feels like it! If God is in control, and I am not being punished....then what the heck is going on here?

A year ago today I wrote about it being Bertie's due date, and I didn't know how much more my shattered heart could take. Today I sit here writing that I have only just realised what date it even is....but my heart? Still shattered. I'm still desparate, still bitter, still exhausted, and still angry. I feel broken, physically, emotionally, faithfully.

Christmas. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given".  Only not to us. Never to us.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bertie's mum. Christmas carols are full of stabs of pain like the line you have quoted, aren't they? Away in a manger's "No crib for a bed...", In the bleak midwinter's "What can I give him?...What I can I give him, Give my heart", not to mention the whole of the Coventry Carol, which seems to be about saying goodbye to a little tiny child slaughtered. Any wooden nativity scene, any stable scene on a card, the iconography is all newborn baby boys and happy happy happy. It hurts.

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