Holiday Challenges

The holidays are difficult for us to face with my mom being gone. She was the glue that held our family together and without her things are a tangled mess. Normalcy will never be possible but it would be nice if we could at least find a groove or a place to survive the holidays. Last year we decompressed and regrouped with a family we grew to love but this year that's not possible as death caused changes in that family too. All I want to do this year is to escape. I have so many fabulous memories of my mom but somehow they are tangled in a huge knot by the thoughts of facing the holidays again without her.

If there was a time machine I would take my kids and I through it back in time to the special town in California where my great aunts and great grandmother lived when I was a young child. We would join in on their festivities and be refreshed and revived. Instead, we must somehow confront what we ran from last year. Maybe there will be a solution to the knots inside of us. Tangles and all we must move forward even if we are woven together in a huge cocoon that we can't escape from. Maybe there is an answer my brain has not fathomed. I continue to pray for some sort of plan. Usually I can think of several options to one problem, that's just how my mind works but for some reason in this situation I'm just grasping for straws. Probably it's because I'm so tightly trapped in the snarl to see past it. God has to have a plan that my primitive thoughts cannot fathom. I'm praying for this. Right now things seem impossible and depressing; answers are elusive.

I know I'm not alone though with these difficulties. Others will be facing pain too because of death in their families. This changes everything and makes the holidays difficult to embrace. I pray that God will give everyone struggling with grief this holiday season the wisdom to know what to do, what traditions to keep, what new ones to create and strength to survive the holidays without their loved ones present. May we hold onto our precious memories this holiday season and find a reason to be thankful.