Christmas Blues

I cannot tell you how incredibly excited I have been the last two month about finally experiencing a white Christmas. It would have been my first. I had a white Thanksgiving when I was six. All I remember is crying because I was embarressed that my dearest Mommy forced me to wear ziploc bags over my tennis shoes in front of my snow-savvy cousins, who of course were prepared with shirpah boots. I still remember that day better than almost any other memory from my childhood (except that one time I tricked bare-footed Matthew into stepping into dog doody during a game of freezetag. That's a good one too). Anyhow, all my snow-flurry dreams were shattered four days ago when my family informed me that they were self-quarrantined to their house because my little sister had developed a bad case of walking pneumonia. The trip was off. I played the grown-up, but inside I was throwing myself on the floor, kicking and screaming. I WANT SNOW!!! Louisville and Roanoke had been calling my name, teasing me with their exciting weather reports and whispers of enough snow to make both snow angels AND Mr. Snowman. I was disappointed. I'm still disappointed. The cold weather here is nice, it's beautiful in fact, but it cannot compete with the anticipation of experiencing for MYSELF that every snowflake is indeed different from every other snowflake. (Does anybody REALLY believe that? It's not even provable.) Then, NATURALLY, my thoughts turned spiritual, and I began to think about the fact that the first Christmas was filled with bitter disappointments, so much worse than my own. For a young girl, younger even than myself (even though I just got my ID checked at the PET STORE yesterday to hold a puppy), her dreams of a beautiful traditional marriage were shot with a call from God to a harder road. As if that weren't difficult enough, the good man she married to had to take her to this insanely stupid government body-check so the man in charge of the country could determine how great he was, etc. THEN, sure enough by Murphy's Law, she has labor pains as soon as she's as far from home as she can get. There goes dreams of sharing this precious moment with her mom and pop, her siblings, and most importantly, her best girlfriends. Instead, she shares it with some pigs, maybe some cattle, a couple cats too? Who knows what blessed dumb animals were graced with the birth of the King, but regardless, I'm sure Mary had plenty of time to feel the keen disappointment of her less-than-ideal circumstances. What a trooper she was. The reality of the circumstances of Christ's birth are so very different than I ever thought, growing up. A good friend reminded me lately that disappointment is essentially denying God's perfect plan and ultimately His goodness. I don't want any part of that, that's for sure. So here's to walking pneumonia and smelly stables --- God is good!