Latest / Daily Devotions for Busy Lives / When Your Family Holidays Are Unrecognizable Now

Transcript

When Your Family Holidays Are Unrecognizable Now · Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

• 0:01
  Bart Leger: For almost 37 years, Terry and her husband built a
• 0:04
  life together, and the holidays looked pretty much the same
• 0:07
  every year. The smells from the kitchen, the way the house
• 0:10
  filled up when everyone arrived. Then, in the fall of 2019, a
• 0:14
  terminal illness took him, and the first Christmas came anyway.
• 0:18
  She barely remembers it. she thinks she put up a treat, but
• 0:22
  she can't say for sure how she managed it. The lights and the
• 0:25
  music she used to love only stirred up everything she had
• 0:28
  lost. home now felt unsteady under her feet. The truth was,
• 0:34
  the Christmas she knew was gone with him, and she had no idea
• 0:37
  how to do the next one. We'll come back to what she found on
• 0:40
  the other side of that. But first,
• 0:45
  welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger. Our
• 0:49
  first Christmas after Catherine's passed away, we did
• 0:52
  the day. The tree went up, people came, and there was a
• 0:55
  hole in the middle of it that nobody said out loud. I kept
• 0:58
  waiting for it to start feeling like Christmas, and it never
• 1:01
  quite got
• 1:04
  first year is the one that takes everything out of you. Saying
• 1:07
  that to somebody and living it in your own house are two
• 1:10
  different things. The holidays you grew up with are not the
• 1:13
  holidays you have now. A parent died or marriage ended. Your
• 1:17
  grown children moved across the country, and now they rotate
• 1:20
  years with the in-laws. The table you used to gather around
• 1:24
  no longer exists, and the one you used to sit at now can feel
• 1:27
  like a smaller, sadder version of the original. Here's what
• 1:31
  makes lonesome. do. The kids are fine, somebody put music on, and
• 1:37
  you're standing in the kitchen remembering how many people used
• 1:40
  to be in this house on this day. The psalmist wrote about weeping
• 1:44
  and joy. It's in Psalm 35.
• 1:54
  Joy comes in the morning. Look at what David hands you there. A
• 1:59
  night in the morning. That's a pattern he had watched God keep.
• 2:02
  A pattern that tells you what happens without telling you when.
• 2:06
  People use this verse as a promise that relief shows up on
• 2:08
  a schedule. But David's making a bigger claim than that, and I
• 2:12
  believe, a slower one. He wrote this after coming through
• 2:16
  something so he knew what a long night was. What he gives you is
• 2:20
  the assurance that the weeping has an end to it somewhere, and
• 2:25
  that God has been in the business of bringing mornings
• 2:27
  for a long time now. And notice the order he puts them in.
• 2:30
  Weeping comes first. David doesn't rush past it or
• 2:34
  apologize for it, and you don't have to either. So cry about
• 2:38
  what ended. The holiday you grew up with was something. It
• 2:42
  deserves to be missed. Grieving is the price of having love to
• 2:46
  the people who used to be at the table. Then look at how God
• 2:49
  tends to work on the other side of a loss. He rebuilds, and what
• 2:53
  he rebuilds rarely matches the blueprint of what stood there
• 2:56
  before. Different house. Same
• 3:10
  leaves room for one or two you've never done before. Terry
• 3:11
  didn't try to force the old Christmas
• 3:18
  Christmas back to life, and she didn't cancel it either. Little
• 3:23
  by little, she kept some of the traditions that still meant
• 3:26
  something and let go of the ones that only hurt. She started
• 3:30
  building a few new ones. She wrote later that she wanted the
• 3:34
  grace and courage to enjoy the life God still gives, even
• 3:38
  changed, even with the empty chair. The holidays never went
• 3:42
  back to what they were, but joy, the kind that rejoices in spite
• 3:46
  of the grief, started finding its way back to her table. Look
• 3:50
  at the road Terry took. Two easy options were open to her that
• 3:54
  first year. Forced the old Christmas to happen exactly as
• 3:57
  it always had, or call the whole thing off. She took neither one,
• 4:02
  and what she did instead was slow unglamorous work. And look
• 4:06
  at the word she used, the grace and courage to enjoy the life
• 4:11
  God still gives. Still gives. Present tense. She was not
• 4:15
  finished being given things. Here's today's Here's today's
• 4:17
  challenge. Before the holidays get there, take 20 minutes and
• 4:20
  go through your traditions on paper. Write down what you're
• 4:24
  keeping and write down what you're setting down this year.
• 4:27
  Give yourself permission on that second
• 4:31
  table and who you're grieving. He already knows. Something
• 4:36
  happens when you say it to him anyway.
• 4:40
  people through the night. You have never rushed a grieving
• 4:43
  person. For everybody listening who is looking at the holiday
• 4:47
  that doesn't remember the one they grew up with, be at the
• 4:50
  table with them and give them the grace and the courage to
• 4:52
  enjoy what you still give. Thank you for filling in your time the
• 4:55
  way you always have. In Jesus' name. Amen. If you need prayer
• 5:00
  today, I'd love to hear from you. You can leave me a voicemail at
• 5:04
  DailyDevotionsForBusyLives.com slash voicemail. I listen to
• 5:08
  every single one, and it would be an honor to bring your name
• 5:11
  before the Lord. Thanks for joining me on Daily Devotions
• 5:15
  for Busy Lives. Remember, weeping gets its own line in
• 5:17
  that verse, and so does the morning. Grieve the table you
• 5:20
  lost and let God set a new one. Come back next time for more
• 5:24
  encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth. Until
• 5:27
  then, God bless and have a great day.