I have a birthday this week but it really doesn't feel like it. It will probably pass with little notice much like our tenth anniversary did a few weeks ago. As someone who likes to celebrate because it's say, Wednesday this is odd but necessary, the budget is tight. So we wrote each other little notes and decided to celebrate big for the eleventh. The past few weeks have been hard. I picked up my great niece and great nephew to come stay with us for awhile. It didn't work out how we had hoped and I am heart broken. We drove them to a meeting spot and met up with their parents and they are headed home as I type. I am trying to savor the good that came of it and not count it as a failure but in this moment that is what it feels like.
It's not the only circumstance that has left me heart broken recently, there's another similar where I feel like saying yes to my family means saying know to kids I love. That's one of the things about ministry is I have to balance all this yes and no business. One of the things I will soon give up is the ability to travel at Christmas time because pastors work on Christmas. Christmas is still two full months away but on my mind mostly because I recently turned down an opportunity for some temporary work because I would have to work Christmas among other reasons. Here's the thing I am sitting at this great crossroads in my life awaiting my first call. There is a lot of movement on this journey but at the speed it is going I doubt I will be working by the time December 25 rolls around.
I also know that life is fragile, here one day and gone the next. It doesn't matter if you age is measured in months or decades, we all will die, the chances of our time coming increases as we get older. Maybe it's weird to contemplate my mother's mortality but I am, after all my father has already met his end, I know each day is precious. My mom while not that old is not getting any younger and I may not have the opportunity to travel and spend Christmas with her again. So even though I swore I would never travel on Christmas while L was little and that I would never spend it in the sunshine state, I find myself day dreaming about it. L waking up in a house where she can be as loud as she wants. Where she can spread out all her new stuff with out obstructing every inch of walking space. Where she gets to be surrounded by family who loves her and eat Grandma's meatballs.
My early Christmas wish is that I will find the budgetary wiggle room to make it happen, to head out one December morning and celebrate Christmas with my over excited child and her equally over excited Grandma.
In a perfect world all my siblings would be there too.
It's one of the things I miss the most getting to be with family on holidays.
Today I am grateful for all the moments that lead to memories.
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