Just Getting Through It

Oh, the Christmas season is a lot of things. It’s vacation from work or school. It’s wide-eyed children under the Christmas tree. It’s the birth of Christ. It’s busy and stressful. It’s heightened emotions on the road, in the stores and in our homes. It’s full of joy and sorrow. The young mostly love it, but I just want to get through it. That was true of everything the first fifteen or so years since my mom died. It wasn’t just the holidays that were too much. Life was, and I was just surviving. At about year seven post-accident, a co-worker asked me my career goals, my 10-year plan.

My response: I’m just biding my time. To bide: to remain in a condition or state, to wait. What was I waiting for? Why did I want to remain in that condition?

The truth is I didn’t know how to move. Sometimes a pause is the correct and only response.

Action must wait for wisdom.

The pause between the words or the notes or the breaths is required. You can’t have a story or a song or a life without the pause.

Cindy from work is bubbly. She is big in stature and personality. She calls us Honey, Beautiful, Sweetheart. She reminds me of the Aunt Jemima Cookie Jar of my childhood. But no matter the time of day or day of the week, she is just “getting through.” “I’m great Sweetheart, only one more day till the weekend.”

Just Get Through It.

What does that phrase do to your body? Tense, right? It makes your nervous system brace.

So this year, in honor of sending my final manuscript to my publisher, I decided to try to apply some of my Flying Lessons to this season I want to wipe off the calendar. I chose to be in the moment every moment. Memories came, some sad, some glad. I chose to live them fully. To feel the pain and the joy. To love the person I was with and the person I wish I could have.

Then… my “adopted” family announced that The Gifford Family Christmas would be celebrated on December 28^th. No, that is not what I signed up for. I prepared to endure this only “through” Christmas.

Now, you’re extending it another three days?!

Oh, well, that’s okay. Their invite is only a pity invite to ensure I’m not alone on actual Christmas. They will surely not expect my participation after Christmas. I don’t really have to apply my Flying Lessons, do I?

I mean, I did join them for Christmas dinner. That’s good enough, right?

I can’t really think of a good excuse, so I say, “No, I don’t really want to extend Christmas.” But this “adopted” family has all the expectations of a real one, and “no” is understood and heard, but not accepted.

I feel the love, and more importantly, I accept it.

So this year, Christmas is not over, yet. My body is responding in some interesting ways, as is my heart. They are linked, so that’s not surprising. I’m facing it. I’m talking through it, writing through it, and growing through it.

But I’m not just getting through it.

The Flying Lessons

When it hurts too much, it’s okay to step outside your skin and curl up in a ball. Then when we are willing to walk through hell and feel the pain, no matter how big, we can be present in our skin and find choice souls to hold it (dogs work). That support, that honesty with ourselves and each other, will give us the courage to feel the triumph, no matter how small, to trust ourselves and to be honest with God. We will learn to be okay when sometimes it doesn’t change. Our honest presence, in our experiences, teaches us how to really live, now, and to breathe as deeply as we can, today.

The pause is the crucial component in this entire process.

Patiently wait for the healing. Don’t force it. Learn to love the life we are given. We have every resource needed, already. We just need to look, and sometimes we need help finding. That is beautiful.

When we go through hell together, when we feel the pain of another, when we are present with each other, when we trust that connection in the moment, when we are honest with God, when we celebrate the small triumphs, when we accept the unchangeable, when we breathe together… that is living.

We are in this together. Be here.

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