an open christmas letter to my readers: the gift of belief

Dear Wonderful Readers and Friends,

This is going to be a very different post than it would have been an hour ago. I was quite prepared to sit down tonight and write about giving up. How I was so physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted that I was simply going to quit with all the stupid hopeful optimism already. It didn't seem to be getting me anywhere. How I felt so ugly and old and scared and especially incapable of the burdens laid on my shoulders.

Christmas is hard. It feels like someone is shining a giant red and green spotlight on the big void in my life--the one caused by the absence of Brad. This is my second Christmas without him, and it's still difficult. I watch the joy in our children's eyes as they decorate the tree ,or visit Santa ,or stick candy on the gingerbread house ,or tell me the story of the baby Jesus being born. I so badly want to look over into the eyes of their father and share that "we done good" smile that we'd shared a million times. To reach for his hand. To lay my head on his shoulder at the end of a hectic but wonderful day. Now, I can't even get him to look me in the eyes during the few minutes he spends dropping off or picking up the boys. In my heart, I still deeply love this man who is there....but not there for me anymore.

With that attitude of disparaging sadness, I was ready to let spill from my fingers what would have been probably the most depressing Christmas message ever! Then right before I did, a friend of mine caught me on the chat feature of my computer. She and her three boys lost their husband and father in September to a massive heart attack. He wasn't even 40. She asked me for some advice on if her life would ever feel normal again....on how to find hope during this bleak period.....on whether or not she would ever find someone to love her again.

And there I was--answering her questions while answering my own at the same time. My life was put into perspective in the act helping her to find some. It's true---It is not easy. There will always be that scar, that pain, that yearning for those we love who leave us--in whatever capacity that might be--but there will always be hope. It reminded me of some of the words penned by Francis Pharsellus Church, editor of the New York Sun, in 1897. A young girl named Virginia had wrote him to ask if there was really such thing as Santa Claus as her friends had told her there wasn't. To this he said:

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge......

......You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

So, this Christmas I have decided to give myself the gift of believing just a little longer. I don't know when or in what way I am ever going to get over the great pain inflicted on me in this life by the person I loved most, but I choose to continue to believe that I will heal. That there will be a time of sweet peace in my life again and even a type of innocence to be rediscovered. For now, I cling to the blessings I have. I breathe in the joy of the little moments. I take time to acknowledge my pain and cry through it, then to put myself back together and push on.

The future is as bright as your faith: May you grasp that message as I have and be showered with all that is good and bright this holiday season. Merry, Merry Christmas!

With all my love,

~Jennifer P.