It’s Christmas Eve. I have cookies baking in the oven and Toffee cooling on top of the refrigerator, tasks that normally would have been completed weeks ago. Somehow this year was different. Work, busyness, and some issues with my back have consumed the days and weeks usually given to Christmas preparations. Some traditions were sadly neglected this year. 

The exterior lights remain in their boxes in the basement. Instead of platters of Christmas goodies, we will have a couple of selections. Plans for handmade gifts were shelved and replaced with store boughten. I have a list of Christmas blog posts that remain unwritten and unpublished. 

It’s the tension we all experience. We work to make the Christmas celebration special and in doing so, almost lose the real meaning, the real magic. 

Tonight, four of my five children and my son-in-law will sleep under my roof. Tomorrow, my house will be filled with family. Like you, we will open gifts, share meals, laugh, play and probably even take a nap. 

This had been a difficult year for our family. We’ve walked a road we never expected to walk. It’s left us battered and bruised. We’ve experienced fear, hurt, anger, and disappointment. Failure has shouted it’s accusations. 

But as our family gathers, the Christmas preparations I didn’t manage to get done this year will be forgotten. All of the busyness and chaos, the disappointments and failures, the things that threatened to overwhelm us this year, those things that challenged our faith, stole our hope, brought tears to our eyes and forced us to our knees will fade.

We will allow peace, joy, and love to take their place, to bring healing where we’ve hurt and hope where we’ve felt hopeless. And overwhelming gratitude will fill my heart … for precious loved ones and for the one who humbled himself to be born in a manger, the Christ child, Emmanuel, God with Us. The one who knows our brokenness and loves us still. 

May your hearts be filled with hope this Christmas.