Wednesday, December 2, 2015
I should be sleeping. It is 1:30 in the morning and I am exhausted, but my mind tonight has decided to think about every Christmas I ever had as a kid. So the only way to hopefully get any sleep is to write some of these memories down.
Christmas as a kid was either traveling to TN or MI for my mom's side of the family or MO for my dad's side of the family. We would always open our gifts a few days before we left and I can still to this day picture my gifts under the tree. Christmas in TN was all about seeing my Grandma and Pawpaw. They would have a tree in their living room. Sometimes by the window and sometimes in the corner. There would be lots of presents and we would always talk Grandma into opening a few on Christmas Eve. It would involve sitting on the scratchy orange couch and listen to my Grandma tell story after story and we would laugh until we cried about all her crazy adventures. It was also a given that one of our gifts would be the flower scented bath cubes or the gel bath balls. I found some of these cubes while we were cleaning out their house after they both passed. I still have them. The scent of them always takes me back to Christmas at Grandma's house. There were many years that Christmas was spent in MI at my Uncle Mike and Aunt Roses' house. We were always excited to go to their house because they were the only ones in the family that had a chimney, so we knew for sure that Santa would be coming to their house! So many good memories of Christmas in MI. There was one Christmas Eve that we were all sent to bed but we stayed up laughing and carrying on with our cousins and we kept singing some silly song that has something to do with bologna and Beaufort's barbershop (yeah, I know crazy). We were all still awake after our parent's went to bed and my cousin, Josh, went down to the basement to see if Santa had come. He returned to let us know that the only thing he happened to see was his gift, Grayskull's Castle (He-Man). Wonderful memories of leaving cookies and milk and my mom's fudge, trying to figure out if Santa was real.
Christmas in MO was a little different. I have posted before that my Granny was a little different than my other Grandma. I have also mentioned in another post that as kids we didn't always understand just how much Granny loved us, but she did. We would get to Granny's and chances are there wouldn't be a Christmas tree. If there was a tree, it was a small tree that was cut down in her yard that one of my cousin's set up for her. There would not be presents under the tree and we knew that we would each be getting $5.00. If a tree was not set up we would go out and cut one down with her and decorate it with whatever she has lying around. Christmas night every Douglas in the county would gather at her house. The house would be packed with uncles, aunts, and cousins. All of the kids would be shoved in the bedroom and the older kids would dare the younger kids to go in the back room. The "back room" was the room that my Granny would sleep in most of the time, but it was filled with clothes and who knows what else (picture a scene from Hoarders), it also did not have a light that worked so it was super dark in there. There was also the Christmas that a huge ice storm hit the area and my Granny's already creepy house out in the boondocks because that much creepier with no electricity or running water for days. Ice clung to everything and as we would try to sleep at night you could hear limbs and ice crashing throughout the night. The uncles and aunts in town finally got the electricity back on so we were rescued and spent the rest of the time with them.
As we got older and started going off to college we did not travel as often and we would spend some Christmas's at home and then travel later. As a college kid I longed to come home from Christmas where I knew there would be sugar cookies, fudge, and hopefully snow. So many wonderful memories running through my mind! Returning back to college from Christmas break and you boyfriend (now husband) telling you that he loved you for the first time, first Christmas as a married couple, first Christmas with our kids and passing on our Christmas traditions.The trouble with remembering so much is that those not so good Christmas's also creep into your mind (insert Inside Out movie premise :).
The Christmas that all you really want is to be cured from cancer. The Christmas that the farthest thing in you heart in joy and hope because you just had the worst year of your life and the only thing keeping you somewhat together are the anti-depressants. The Christmas where we had been waiting for months for Emma to come home only to have unopened gifts with her name on it on Christmas day. Losing my beloved fur-baby, Maggie, just two days before Christmas and nobody understanding how much your heart is broken over this creation of God that brought you so much comfort. The Christmas that two people you love so much break the news that their marriage is over and you see the brokenness and pain in the people that you cherish so much. Then spending the rest of your break helping them clean out their house to put on the market. Christmas's where key people in your life are missing due to death. The Christmas where families where almost forever altered by insensitive words that caused a huge argument. Christmas's filled with financial worry, spiritual depletion, physically pain, and emotional exhaustion.
BUT, here is the beauty of Christmas! The reason that through the good and the bad that we have HOPE. The beauty of the Christmas story now overflows in my heart as I turn my mind on our Savior. Jesus, in all His glory, left this glory to enter our world to redeem us. He is the giver of all the good memories that have flooded my mind today, but He is also the Wonderful Counselor, the Might, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Even in the rough Christmas's He was good. He was fulfilling His promise to be everything that He claimed to be. I am thankful every day that Jesus entered our world so that we could be part of His family and He could be our Father. I am so very thankful for that first Christmas, may I never forget magnitude of it's meaning.
Christmas as a kid was either traveling to TN or MI for my mom's side of the family or MO for my dad's side of the family. We would always open our gifts a few days before we left and I can still to this day picture my gifts under the tree. Christmas in TN was all about seeing my Grandma and Pawpaw. They would have a tree in their living room. Sometimes by the window and sometimes in the corner. There would be lots of presents and we would always talk Grandma into opening a few on Christmas Eve. It would involve sitting on the scratchy orange couch and listen to my Grandma tell story after story and we would laugh until we cried about all her crazy adventures. It was also a given that one of our gifts would be the flower scented bath cubes or the gel bath balls. I found some of these cubes while we were cleaning out their house after they both passed. I still have them. The scent of them always takes me back to Christmas at Grandma's house. There were many years that Christmas was spent in MI at my Uncle Mike and Aunt Roses' house. We were always excited to go to their house because they were the only ones in the family that had a chimney, so we knew for sure that Santa would be coming to their house! So many good memories of Christmas in MI. There was one Christmas Eve that we were all sent to bed but we stayed up laughing and carrying on with our cousins and we kept singing some silly song that has something to do with bologna and Beaufort's barbershop (yeah, I know crazy). We were all still awake after our parent's went to bed and my cousin, Josh, went down to the basement to see if Santa had come. He returned to let us know that the only thing he happened to see was his gift, Grayskull's Castle (He-Man). Wonderful memories of leaving cookies and milk and my mom's fudge, trying to figure out if Santa was real.
Christmas in MO was a little different. I have posted before that my Granny was a little different than my other Grandma. I have also mentioned in another post that as kids we didn't always understand just how much Granny loved us, but she did. We would get to Granny's and chances are there wouldn't be a Christmas tree. If there was a tree, it was a small tree that was cut down in her yard that one of my cousin's set up for her. There would not be presents under the tree and we knew that we would each be getting $5.00. If a tree was not set up we would go out and cut one down with her and decorate it with whatever she has lying around. Christmas night every Douglas in the county would gather at her house. The house would be packed with uncles, aunts, and cousins. All of the kids would be shoved in the bedroom and the older kids would dare the younger kids to go in the back room. The "back room" was the room that my Granny would sleep in most of the time, but it was filled with clothes and who knows what else (picture a scene from Hoarders), it also did not have a light that worked so it was super dark in there. There was also the Christmas that a huge ice storm hit the area and my Granny's already creepy house out in the boondocks because that much creepier with no electricity or running water for days. Ice clung to everything and as we would try to sleep at night you could hear limbs and ice crashing throughout the night. The uncles and aunts in town finally got the electricity back on so we were rescued and spent the rest of the time with them.
As we got older and started going off to college we did not travel as often and we would spend some Christmas's at home and then travel later. As a college kid I longed to come home from Christmas where I knew there would be sugar cookies, fudge, and hopefully snow. So many wonderful memories running through my mind! Returning back to college from Christmas break and you boyfriend (now husband) telling you that he loved you for the first time, first Christmas as a married couple, first Christmas with our kids and passing on our Christmas traditions.The trouble with remembering so much is that those not so good Christmas's also creep into your mind (insert Inside Out movie premise :).
The Christmas that all you really want is to be cured from cancer. The Christmas that the farthest thing in you heart in joy and hope because you just had the worst year of your life and the only thing keeping you somewhat together are the anti-depressants. The Christmas where we had been waiting for months for Emma to come home only to have unopened gifts with her name on it on Christmas day. Losing my beloved fur-baby, Maggie, just two days before Christmas and nobody understanding how much your heart is broken over this creation of God that brought you so much comfort. The Christmas that two people you love so much break the news that their marriage is over and you see the brokenness and pain in the people that you cherish so much. Then spending the rest of your break helping them clean out their house to put on the market. Christmas's where key people in your life are missing due to death. The Christmas where families where almost forever altered by insensitive words that caused a huge argument. Christmas's filled with financial worry, spiritual depletion, physically pain, and emotional exhaustion.
BUT, here is the beauty of Christmas! The reason that through the good and the bad that we have HOPE. The beauty of the Christmas story now overflows in my heart as I turn my mind on our Savior. Jesus, in all His glory, left this glory to enter our world to redeem us. He is the giver of all the good memories that have flooded my mind today, but He is also the Wonderful Counselor, the Might, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Even in the rough Christmas's He was good. He was fulfilling His promise to be everything that He claimed to be. I am thankful every day that Jesus entered our world so that we could be part of His family and He could be our Father. I am so very thankful for that first Christmas, may I never forget magnitude of it's meaning.
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