Holidays focus a lens on our lives which make the good so much better and the bad so much worse.

I remember being 8 months pregnant with Liam and ordering Chinese food for a Christmas meal with Bill, Mom and my brother Mike. It was our first holiday season without my father, who had received the news of the impending arrival of his first grandchild a few weeks before he died. His soft response after a long silence had been, “Your mother will be so pleased.”
It was a Christmas of deep sadness and great joy all mixed in with egg rolls and moo shu pork. Remembering it makes me cry.

We want things to be happy and go well, and when they don’t meet our expectations, we may feel extremely disappointed or depressed. It is also a time of receding daylight and a call to anticipate the return of the sun’s warmth, even in north Florida.

Seasonal creatures we are, wrapped in seasons and cycles of light and dark, warmth and cold, birth and death. We cannot have the one without the other.

May each of you find the hope to help you weather the grief that bubbles up this time of year!

in wisdom and grace,
Rev. Ruth