Love Story… the movie that coined the phrase, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  I’ve never heard a more ridiculous phrase.  If anything love requires from us that we humble ourselves and apologize or love will die.

On Christmas day I wrote a blog post that should never have been written on a public domain and has since been removed.  I let my frustrations, grief and anger find their release in writing, which is my therapy.  However, there is no place in any public blog for personal conflicts to be hung out to dry.  Writing is one thing.  Blasting my sons in writing, without warning of any kind, in such a public manner is another, and completely unacceptable.  I’m heartily sorry and will ask for their forgiveness in person.

Love means having to you’re sorry.  Love also means having to say a good many other things, it’s called communication.  Communication is the key to holding any relationship together.  Communication should not, however, take place in personal attacks on an open forum.

I am sorry. I love my sons very much and they truly are amazing sons.

In my last post I described the beauty of our little hometown church on Christmas Eve.  The red of the Poinsettias, the green of the pine, and the glow of the candle light.  Last year I cried through most of the service, this year I managed to hold it together; thoughts on what Larry might be experiencing in heaven.  What celebrations must there be to remember the night that God became flesh and dwelt among us, becoming vulnerable for us?  How petty and insignificant must our attempts appear to honor the birth of Christ.  What is Christmas?  Who or What do we get our definition from?

I found the Spirit of Christmas for a few brief moments on Christmas Eve.  Not in the carols, even though I love to sing.  Not in the sermon, (sorry Andy) even though the thought-provoking look at the nativity through Revelation was captivating.  Dragons on Christmas Eve is definitely a new one. It wasn’t in the entrance of the lit Christ candle, I’m not even sure I noticed it being carried in. It wasn’t even in the traditional candlelight singing of Silent Night, although I felt the Spirit of Christmas all through that beautiful hymn…. felt the Spirit, didn’t sing much of the song.  I found the Spirit of Christmas shortly after Pastor Andy talked about how the flame for the candles was going to be passed.  I’d “heard” this every year for most of my life, but somehow I had never really heard it.

The flame that lit my little candle and every other candle, held by every other person in that sanctuary, was lit from the same source.  The Christ candle.  That may not seem like much, but to me that meant everything.  I could see the Christ candle just 8 or so feet in front me, with its flame burning brightly.  This year I looked at the larger candle coming down the aisle with the same anticipation I used to have on Christmas morning, what wondrous gift was coming my way?  Excitement with a syncopated heartbeat.  As soon as my candle was lit, I found it very difficult to look away.  My sole focus was on the flame; mine and its source.  All I could l see was my candle and the Christ candle… and the fact that my flame came from Christ’s flame was a connection that was amazing to me, almost overwhelming.  I prayed the hymn would go on forever.  When the service was over I heard candles being “puffed” out all around me, confused as to how they could do that so easily.  My candle stayed lit until it became awkward for me to not blow it out, and when I did blow it out the whole church seemed to me to be a bit darker, even though the lights were back on.

For the first time in my life I held the true meaning of Christmas in my heart for those all too short moments.  I can still feel them when I stop to think about it, but it’s not the same.  When I held the light, the flame of Christ’s spirit, in my hand; when I had the flame that had been directly lit from His flame, I held the true meaning of Christ’s birth; for those moments I could feel Emmanuel – God with us – alive in my heart.  I could feel Emmanuel inside my spirit, inside my soul.  That is what Christmas is really all about, not giving pretty gifts or helping Santa save the day.  Emmanuel Christmas is what you will not find on the 25 Days of Christmas Movies.  But if everyone could feel what I felt on Christmas Eve, there would be a hunger to know Christ better, rather than the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the world would be one step closer to being the world God created it to be.

John 1

The Word Became Flesh

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome^[a] it.

Don’t you just love Christmas trees?  They have the magical ability to change even the drabbest of environments into a beautiful, enchanted wonderland of twinkling possibilities.  I can never make up my mind if I like the multicolored or the white lights the best, or maybe all one color, like red or purple (purple does stand for royalty you know).   And then there is the decision to twinkle or not to twinkle. Although now, with all of these modern techno gadgets you can twinkle fast, or gradually fade in and out, twinkle in time with the carols even.  Too fancy for me.  I have enough problems with just twinkle or not.

Then there is the garland, ribbons, ornaments…. our tree is quite tall now, 9′.  We have 10′ ceilings so our 9′ tree looks pretty good.  It’s pre-lit so my dilemma of colors or white / twinkle or not has been taken out of my hands.  The 9′ tree has white lights that do not twinkle.  In fact it has so many of them that one of my favorite Christmas pastimes has also been taken away from me.  It is impossible to sit in the dark and watch the lights on the Christmas tree…. this tree lights up the whole house, probably the whole neighborhood and quite possibly the whole Northeast side of town.  Did I mention that it’s a very bright tree?  The ornaments on it aren’t fashionable or organized.  They are an eclectic mix of homemade school craft projects, dollar store finds, and vacation souvenirs.  We always bring home a Christmas ornament from every place we travel to add to our mix.  Our tree sports unlikely neighbors such as popsicle nativity scenes and a pink sparkly flamingo .  The flamingo may not be scriptural, but she does remind us of time well spent together and brings back hugs and smiles as she is hung on a tree along with, “do you remember…?”

I remember the tree my family had when we were growing up.  It to was artificial.  Dad would set it up a few weeks before Christmas and my little brother, Jay and I would help him.  The first thing we would do is sort all of the limbs out by the color of the tip.  Then Jay and I would take turns handing dad the limbs according to the tip color he needed next.  Dad would put all of the lights on… strictly colored and always twinkling.  Then the ornaments would go on.  No garland, no ribbon, no tinsel.  Just the lights and the ornaments.  Jay and I could put our ornaments on and any others that wouldn’t break, but only dad could put on the glass ornaments.  We knew better than to touch them.

One year though, my parents left us home… alone.  We must have been like 11 and 9 or something.  My youngest brother, Kipp, wasn’t born yet, so we couldn’t have been any older than that.  We used to accomplish some pretty amazing feats when we were left home alone, Jay and I did!!  One time we created the worlds largest house of cards.  It took up the whole living room floor.  We used up every deck of mom and dad’s bridge cards in the house and just to make it really pretty, we mixed them all up too.  We left it up when we went to bed so that mom and dad could see it when they got home, cause it was totally awesome!  We also left the TV on, cause we couldn’t get to it to shut it off without destroying our beautiful house of cards.  Jay and I found out the next morning that mom and dad weren’t quite as impressed with our beautiful house of cards as we were.  It took a really long time to get those decks of cards all sorted out again too.

On this particular night, Jay and I decided that this year we were going to surprise mom and dad by putting the tree up all by ourselves!  They were gone at some Christmas-y function and we thought the tree should be up by now, so we decided to go ahead and just do it.   We knew the routine by now.  Get the stand out, put the tree-pole in the stand, sort out the limbs by color, put the limbs in the pole by color, next is the lights and finally the ornaments.  By this age we felt fully qualified to handle the glass ornaments.  These glass ornaments weren’t just the boxed glass ornaments that you can buy at Wal-Mart or Target, these were the hand blown glass ornaments that had been dad’s grandmother’s and they were very special to him.  Something that we didn’t quite grasp at 11 & 9.

The tree was up, decorated and looking pretty good.  Jay and I were very pleased with ourselves…  Until…  The tree did a slow swan dive onto the TV and then onto the floor.  This was an AFV worthy dive, lights popping and ornaments crashing… dad’s ornaments.  We had managed to destroy every one of dad’s ornaments, the ones we weren’t supposed to touch.  We also broke a glass swan vase that mom had sitting on top of the TV.  Ironic huh?  I don’t remember if we forgot to tighten the bolts on the stand, or if we used the wrong stand altogether and it just couldn’t support the weight.  Either way we took on something that was not ours to take on and this time we got into a bit more trouble than we did with the house of cards.  Some things you just can’t fix with a few hours of sorting it out.  Dad did forgive us and Santa still came that year.

Out of all the Christmases growing up, that is the tree I remember the most.  I think about it every year as we decorate our Christmas tree.

The senses are very powerful.  Isn’t it amazing how a smell or a taste can take you instantly to a moment in time millions of light years removed from the moment your body is located in?  I have some constant triggers.  Chicken livers take me instantly to my Grandma Long’s kitchen on a cold winter’s night.  The kitchen is snug and warm, with six gathered around her gray Formica and chrome table with red vinyl and chrome chairs.  The mingled aromas from the fried chicken, mashed potatoes (a bit lumpy for texture, thank you), chicken gravy with bits of crunchy chicken coating in it, corn (frozen from the past summer, of course), and dinner rolls gathered in the center of the table are rich.  Ice cold whole milk in my tiny, flowered jelly glass.  My personal favorite was the one with daffodils on it.  Life was good and full and safe here in my grandmother’s kitchen.  My parent’s and my grandparent’s would never let anything happen to me, they all loved me.  My tummy was full, my heart was full, and Lawrence Welk would be on TV soon!

My grandmother died just before Christmas 1973 and subsequently just before my tenth birthday.  I have many memories of her, but none as wonderful as ice-cold milk and chicken livers, and that warm cozy kitchen.

My parents loved to listen to the Bing Crosby Christmas album when I was little.  Those songs can instantly take me back to Christmas’s from my Childhood.  My mother actually expected us to take a nap on Christmas Eve…. as if!  Who could even think of a nap during the afternoon of the biggest night of the whole year?!!  I mean really!  So my brother Jay and I would lay on opposite ends of the greatest couch on earth, the Big Green Couch.  This couch was amazing.  We could lay on opposite ends and our feet didn’t touch, for years our feet didn’t touch, it was ginormous!  Jay and I would lay on the couch, whisper about what was in the presents under the tree and giggle.  In later years we already knew what was in the presents under the tree because we became really good at unwrapping and rewrapping them when our parents left us home by ourselves…. I’m not sure if that put us on the naughty list or not, but it probably should have.

Christmas Eve was at Grandma Reiners’ house.  Big family, not so big house.  My mom has one sister, my aunt had nine children. Homemade chicken and noodles was the meal of tradition, or oyster stew, but the chicken and noodles is still the favorite.  My Grandma Reiners died in 1993 and what I find particularly amazing, is that it takes nearly the entire family to make the same amount of noodles that my grandma could make.  Plus she made pies and I have no idea how many cookies and breads, she fattened up the entire neighborhood.  Everyone knew they could get fed at Grammy’s house.  It was a loud, sometimes rowdy gathering, occasionally Santa would show up.  But that house, that grew smaller every year, was filled with a love that grew larger as the house grew smaller.

Christmas Morning was at Grandma  & Grandpa Long’s house.  We would bundle up first thing in the morning, as soon as we had seen what Santa had left under the tree and in our stockings (Does anyone else remember an orange in the toe of the stocking?).  Breakfast was warm pecan sticky rolls, coffee for the grownups (the smell again), more milk for me, and frosted flakes for Jay.  I remember sitting at grandma’s walnut dining room table with the white linen table-cloth on it.  There was another guest there today, besides the six of us, Aunt Viola, my grandpa’s daughter.  Christmas Morning was so much quieter.  Jay and I were the only children there.  The smell of a fresh Christmas tree will take me back to Christmas Morning, so will the big, old-fashioned tree lights.  There were certain things we could always count on at grandma & grandpa’s: the turtle filled with bubble bath powder that could later be turned into a bank, and “presents on the tree” in the form of cash envelopes with a dollar bill in them.  We thought we were rich!  Somewhere I still have the elephant that I got for my first Christmas from Aunt Viola.

Life was simpler back then.  Santa Claus is coming to town actually worked with us, for a few years anyway.  We looked forward to Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and the other specials on TV…  Now they are on every night for two months.  And presents are either gifts cards, or broken or discarded before Summer gets here.

What are some of your Christmas memories?

Platitudes… I want to hear your platitudes.  You know those really awful things that well-meaning people say when they don’t know what to say.  The words that never should have left their mouth.  As someone who has just lost a loved one, these platitudes don’t help at all.  At best they cause us to look at the person as if they have 3 heads and each one is speaking a different foreign language.  Most of the time however, the platitudes cut deep and yet we feel obligated to respond with a smile, pretending that we’ve just received the answer to all of our pain.

Some of my favorite platitudes, and by favorite I mean NOT, are:

“God needed him more than you did.”  Oh please!  God does NOT need him more than I do.  God does not NEED anyone!  He is GOD!  Duh!  Does God need him to raise His son?  I don’t think so… Jesus is already grown up.  I need him much more than God does.  This one is definitely on the “Leave it Unsaid” List.

“I know just how your feeling.”  This one is tricky.  Some people may have an idea of the level of your pain, but no one can know just how your feeling, not really.  Everyone’s pain is unique and to have someone tell you they know your exact pain can be hurtful, especially if that person hasn’t experienced the same type of loss that you’re going through.  This one is relegated to the “Needs to Be Modified or Moderated” List, at best.

This is my all time favorite, and by favorite I mean I absolutely HATE it:

“Oh, you’re so lucky, Jesus is your husband now.”  OK, there are just so many wrong aspects of this to a widow, especially a new widow.  I love Jesus with all my heart, but He’s not there to hold me at night when I’m lonely or frightened.  He doesn’t get me laughing when I’m punchy and then pretend to try to help me, knowing all the while that he’s making it worse and soon I’ll be hyperventilating.  Jesus doesn’t fart under the covers and then joke about it.  Jesus can’t physically hold my hand.  Jesus is wonderful and amazing, but telling a widow that she’s lucky, or even mentioning that Jesus is her husband now isn’t helpful.  It’s hurtful.  A widow doesn’t want Jesus as her husband, all she wants is her own husband back.   This one goes on the “Leave It Unsaid” List, at the top, in bold capital letters.

Okay, so those are my top three platitudes.  Now I want to know what yours are!  Any kind of platitudes, not just for grief.

I know that I’m guilty of saying things that have put my too small foot directly into my too large mouth.  One benefit of the grief I’m journeying through is that I’m more aware of what I say to others that are hurting.  If I’ve said anything to you that I should have left unsaid, please list that in the comments as well…. go for it!  😀

During my first year of widowhood, I’ve made lots of choices, as all newly widowed men and women do.  Some are absolutely necessary, some are frivolous.  Some are unknown and frightening, some are merely curious. All are a stepping stone into the realm of independence.

The first choices are made in a complete state of shock, those made at the funeral home.  Even if you’ve known that the death was imminent, the shock of suddenly being alone has hit like a rogue wave on a rocky shore and leaves you gasping for air.  The choices made here have a permanence that carries far past the day, but the decisions can barely be recalled later.  I remember being in the funeral home while the decisions were made,  but my recollections of the encounter are only of my personal thoughts of panic and need for escape.  I cannot at all remember the choices made for the funeral beyond one… cremation.

Then come the necessary choices, such as house repairs.  For me and many widows these choices come with a high level of frustration attached to them.  These were not our choices to make in the past, our husbands made them with us if not for us.  We know little or nothing about them, even less about who to hire to fix them or if we’re getting over-charged because we know little or nothing about them.  These are the situations were we HATE being the needy widow.  Especially if we have no immediate male family members nearby to help us out.  We do Not want to ask for help, but we would be thrilled to death (no pun intended) if someone would offer to help.  Home maintenance 101 should be a mandatory class for every widow, but quite frankly, I can’t reach most places in my house without a really tall ladder, have I mentioned that I’m vertically challenged?  I’m also quite intimidated by all power tools, except for glue guns.  They plug-in so I’m assuming they fall under the category of power tools.

The final category of choices that newly widowed persons find themselves making, especially in that first year are the, “Because I Can” choices.  These are the angry or spiteful choices we make in some subconscious attempt to get even with our spouse for deserting us.  They can range from trivial and silly to expensive or just plain dangerous.  One of my first BIC choices was to cut my hair.  I know this sounds very childish and it was, but Larry didn’t like short hair on women or long hair on men.  I think it hearkened back to his days at the Naval Academy, not sure.  Whatever the reason was, my hair was always longish and after he died I had it cut, just because I could.  And each time I went back to have my roots colored (my hair is chemically dependent, I have NO idea what my natural color is anymore but I’m suspecting there’s a liberal amount of gray) I would have a bit more cut off.  Now short hair on me isn’t a good look.  My heritage is primarily Swedish, with a bit of German and Irish thrown in for good temper, eh huh.  This means that my hair has the basic consistency of spider webs – no body whatsoever.  All of the body went south to my hips.  My hair just kind of lays there.  So with really short hair, my head takes on the general appearance of a Q-tip.  Great if you are a Q-tip, not so great if you’re a woman.  I had one brave and loving friend – thank you Maggie – who had the courage to tell me one evening after Bible School last July that perhaps I’d gone too short with that last hair cut, because it really didn’t look very good.  She was sooo right.  I’m growing it out again now.  Funny thing with hair, it takes longer to grow than it does to cut.

Another BIC decision was to spend too much time on the couch wallowing in my grief.  Time spent on the computer (See To Shop Or Not To Shop), reading, watching movies, or just staring at the walls.  Whatever I was or wasn’t doing, I was sitting and sitting and sitting.  I discovered the harvest of this activity the other night when I put on my favorite flannel jammies for the first time this winter.  The top fits great, better than ever.  The bottoms….  That body that I mentioned above… yeah, well it has been fruitful and multiplied.  I have harvested a big butt  and there isn’t any spandex in flannel!  I squeezed my behind into those bottoms and thought, “Dang, these things got tight!  They must have shrunk in storage or something”  Umm Hmmmm.  No, I just broadened my horizon on my reclining love seat.  So I went back to wearing Larry’s flannel jammies, they’re still too big so they make me feel better… 🙂

There are other BIC choices that I’ve made in the last year, some big, some little.  But all were made with the same attitude.  “You’re not here to tell me no, so I can do this if I want to!”  Some were okay to make, some were not okay to make.  One in particular should have been made years ago, my health has been improved immensely by it.  Am I really getting back at Larry for dying and leaving me alone when I make these decisions?  Of course not.  If the choices are bad the only one who suffers is me, if they are really bad I could hurt my family too.  That would be horrible.  If the choices are good, Larry does not benefit from them.  He’s already in the most wonderful place imaginable, in Heaven with Jesus.

Why do I make choices with these silly childish attitudes attached?  Because I’m human, I’m broken and somewhere inside there is a little girl who wants to get even with someone for destroying her “happily ever after”