Cherishing the Holidays When Life is Hard

I was standing in my kitchen around 10 a.m. with my eyes glazed over, sipping my second cup of coffee. I stared at the heating instructions on the spiral sliced ham a friend had given us earlier that week and my eyes filled to the brim with tears.

It was Christmas day. 

My husband and all three of our children had been struck with the stomach flu. True to form, I was the lone healthy one caring for everyone else. I was bone tired, lonely and overwhelmed.

Almost nine months earlier, a freak accident rendered my husband, Darin partially paralyzed from the waist down. He had been hospitalized for forty days. The moment he was discharged I became his full time caregiver. 

Two months later, our family relocated to the Chicago area for three months for access to a state-of-the art physical rehab program. One month into our time there, Darin took a fall from a standing position and broke his hip, requiring a major surgery and a two-week hospital stay.

When we returned to Des Moines in November 2015, we discovered that our basement had been overtaken by black mold.

Oh yeah and all THREE of our kids’ cherished pet rabbits had DIED.  

Our family’s world had fallen apart, and was taking an unrecognizable form. But the world around us kept moving along and the holiday season had arrived.

It was supposed to be familiar and comforting but from my vantage point, the holidays taunted and teased. 

Still, I wanted to catch and embrace what little bit of cheer I could, if not for myself or my husband but for our sweet kids. They had borne so much sadness and upheaval during the past year. I was desperate to see them happy on Christmas morning.

Yet there I was, with dark circles under my eyes, staring down a Christmas ham that was threatening to undo me. Exhausted by an underwhelming morning of gift opening and vomit, every one else had fallen back asleep. In my quiet kitchen I accepted the fact that my dream of preserving some Christmas cheer for my kids would not be realized.

Before I knew it, though, a quiet snowfall had covered the outside world. My six-year-old son woke up, crept downstairs, and was feeling much better. He looked outside, saw the snow and a grin broke out on his face.  

About an hour after that, my girls woke up and spread a blanket on the living room floor. Soon they were enjoying a tea party with the new tea set they’d unwrapped earlier and began singing Disney songs on their new karaoke machine. 

I brought some ginger ale up to my poor husband who was still sick in bed and wished him a Merry Christmas. Then, like a boss, I prepared that ham and put it in the freezer, to be enjoyed weeks later!  

Memories, yes, joyful ones were in the making! The traumatic events of the past year had taken many things away from my kids, but their tenderness was in still in tact. 

I thought about the ancient story at the center of the holiday I celebrate every December 25th. It’s a story about a baby boy whom I regard as a gracious gift to a troubled world.

Then it dawned at me. Christmas was not about anything I could  give to my family. It was about cherishing the gracious gifts that were tenderly pushing their way through our troubled world. The fact that I was only able to see those gifts when I saw them through the eyes of my children is not lost on me. 

I’ll be forever grateful to them for that on Christmas Day and every day.