It was a good Christmas this year.

Christmas Eve, I was happy to spend some time with my extended family, Wendy and Eric and Zach, along with Eric’s brother and their collective horde of dachshunds and dachshund derivatives.  I had hoped to watch something Christmasy with someone this Christmas, and they came through with “It’s A Wonderful Life.”  It’s been years since I have watched that, and it was meaningful to sit with them and to just soak up a Christmas story, thinking about Christmas and family.

I was also happy to be able to have my family and a few friends come over and enjoy capping off Christmas day with a dinner at my home last night.  We ate enchiladas and tamales, let the nieces and nephews open presents, and then we played games for a while.  The evening was festive and light and meaningful since my family was all together.  It is a gift to have family, and to have family close by.

The holiday season is not without its trials, though.  As a perennial single, I have struggled, and this year I have felt it especially deeply with the loss of friendship and time with G.  I have tried to be sober in dealing with the end of that relationship, but with so many questions inside about why it ended, and what I did wrong to lose her trust and drive her away still grip me.  I am wrestling with letting go of a lot of wishes and hopes and dreams that, for some reason, I built up around her- not to mention simply the loss of the friendship itself- when in my mind I thought I might have actually been a positive in her life. The last three Christmas Eves, I have always ended up at her house to share a moment of reflection and cheer, a ritual I have cherished. I am adjusting to a realization that I apparently meant  a lot less in her life than I thought I did.  It’s been a hard realization that I could be set down so easily and so abruptly.  I am left with a cold awareness that perhaps in all of my efforts to be someone of value to her, I perhaps never really was at all.  That’s a hard realization to accept.  And in part I don’t want to accept, as I have not wanted to accept her silence and disappearance as a formal goodbye.  But every day, I wrestle with it, bring it and her to God, and ask Him for help. It is an odd thing to love someone, and to feel you have loved them pretty squarely and fully, and yet to have them decide to throw you away.  I am still confused and trying to fabricate explanations for the ending.  But in the big picture, where He is involved with these things, I know I am simply to say “Yes, Father. That relationship has gone its term and served its purpose.  I do need to go forward with you.”  But my flesh pulls me back day after day, and I find myself anew missing her and thinking about her.  I guess this happens to some people sometimes.

I am grateful to have a family that loves me in spite of all of this- including a sister who listens to me regularly and who always sees more in me than I do and who encourages me forward in life, and a brother and parents who love me in spite of my moods and wanderings through darker hinterlands.  I know at times they feel helpless to offer me much wisdom outside of trying to live in the day, and not be bogged down by circumstances you canot control. Thoughts I need to remind myself of regularly.

I struggled through Christmas morning also simply because I am single.  Alone in a sizable abode, the silence reminds me of wishes and hopes dreamt of over years past that have not been fulfilled at present (which includes a family of my own, no doubt).  Time moves forward, and I am aware I am aging, and the prospects for that family may be dwindling. In such moments of morose speculation, though, God meets me and reminds me that all things are in His hands, and as long as I am His, I need not beach myself on concerns about the future and the options buried within it.  It is His, as so should I be.  Yes, Father.  Yes.

The evening dinner with my family was joyful, however- full of the noise of children greeting and chasing one another and playing, and the tempered murmurings of the adults talking while food was prepared in the kitchen.  I particularly enjoy seeing my nieces and nephews interact, and noticing little changes in their behaviors and speech that signal they are growing and  changing.  They each have a life with an unwritten future before it, and I have been a part of it.  I get to speak into who they become.  And I get to affirm them as they grow.  It is especially heartwarming to see that they all interact warmly with others, and that each one knows how to hug others in the family.  To me, this single ability affirms that each child recognizes he or she is loved, and that he or she cares about those they are around, and that each one of them trusts.  How powerful the presence of hugs in a gathering are to signal that there is health in a family or community.

I have a week off this week.  I didn’t use today very wisely- I slept or rested for half a day, maligned for a period by melancholy.  Fortunately, a friend and my sister contacted me and got me up and around.  I need to clean up from the party some this evening, and start working on some of the To Do’s I have listed I need to attend to this week.  The week will go fast, and I want to make good use of the time.  Fortunately, I at least have some idea of what I want to accomplish this week, and just need to stay close to the list.

Merry Christmas, friends.  As the Good Book tells us, the reason we celebrate Christmas is because Jesus came to let us know, above all, God is with us.