Christmas: A season to love

I’ve always loved the Christmas season, the music, lights, family time, an added feeling of peace and love for mankind. Fond memories of making caramels with my mom and nana, exchanging Christmas ornaments with the family, singing Christmas songs and listening to my mom play her violin are just a few of the things that have laced beautiful memories of my ‘Christmas past’.
I remember many moons ago when Christian and I decided to start trying to get pregnant we talked about how exciting it would be to bring our sweet new addition home for the holidays. We thought about all the family traditions we so loved and couldn’t wait to share them with our kids. Well the first Christmas came and went and there was no baby or sign of baby to bring home.  I think we were both a little discouraged but thought the next year would be different for sure. It was different; the anticipation of Christmas was different than ever before. The Christmas season had become a marker that reminded us each year that we still had no baby. As the years went on we began seeing our family’s and friend’s families grow. It was bitter sweet as we often thought about how we could have had a child ‘that’ age and still desperately longed to grow our family. It got to the point where I would have a fair amount of anxiety built up around the holidays. I started dreading them. The thought of going home was painful and then I would feel worse for feeling that way. I remember last year begging Christian to take me anywhere but home to California. I didn’t think I could emotionally make it through another year. We still went home and as I had anticipated, it was hard. I remember in the middle of opening presents with my family I looked over at Christian and saw a few tears rolling down his face. A simple glance and we both knew what the other was feeling. There we were, sitting in a family room full of the people we loved most but feeling a sting of sadness- how could that be??!!
Before you get too judge-y its not that we don’t like Christmas, or family time or our nieces and nephew. We LOVE all these things especially those nieces and nephew! The hard part for me was the anticipation of the holiday, the marker of time and the yearning to share it with our own little family...that we never dreamed would possibly take so dang long to make! It was the feeling that something so good and righteous and beautiful was missing from our life. A reminder of the loss we had felt throughout the year as attempt after attempt to make a baby had failed.
 
This year is different. I’m writing this post while snuggling our perfect baby girl with the laptop barely in arms reach because of my belly housing our baby boys. Maybe the last several Christmases wouldn’t have been so difficult had I known what this year would bring. I can’t go back and change how I felt and I’m not sure I would if I could. I don’t necessarily regret feeling the way I did. It’s made me more sensitive to others who are experiencing something similar regardless the cause. My message or reasoning behind this post is to share a little insight to what those around you may be feeling and encourage you to love them regardless. This experience has opened my eyes to so many who suffer in silence, who feel for one reason or another that their family or friends wouldn’t understand why they feel the way they do. Hearing that would always break my heart because I believe one of the biggest and often most difficult assignments we have as mortals is to love one another. PERIOD- the end. Its not an “I’d love them if...” or “I love them but...” Just love them. Feeling the way I did all those years wasn’t fun but it made a world of difference when I knew someone genuinely cared and loved me, and most importantly didn’t try to change how I felt or made me feel bad for feeling the way I did.  So put your arm around someone this Christmas and tell him or her you love them. #lighttheworld by sharing some of that Christ like love.

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