Contentment in the Absence of Perfection

Merry Christmas Eve!  As has become tradition over the last 5 years since I've been blogging, it's time for my annual Christmas post.  As 2017 comes to an end, I'm feeling a bit disjointed.  Whereas last year we were still in a pretty thick fog after the loss of our sweet Bernice and Jonathan and I were doing our best to shore up our best friends as they prepared to lose their mother mere days after the holiday season passed, this year I think we both feel a bit of unrest.  A lack of "settle".  Life feels a bit like an amazing nearly finished puzzle you've worked on for weeks, that is frustratingly missing a chunk right smack in the middle.  Only we've been working on our "puzzle" for several YEARS...

So that feeling of "unfinished business" that we can't quite put behind us yet has spelled a bit of frustration.  We find ourselves striving for goals we know are reasonable and achievable, but they feel just out of reach at the moment.  And when I can't wrap it all in a bow and call it "finished", man does that mess with my psyche!  If it doesn't look like that perfectly perfect picture I have in my head, I come dangerously close to loosing my marbles.  That striving for and failing to obtain perfection is a cycle I find myself in more frequently than I'd like to admit...

So this Christmas season, I have had to work really, really hard at slowing down and savoring...letting go of my need for perfection.  I've had to remind myself that perfection is not the ultimate goal.  Contentment is.  And I think the picture in Bethlehem that God paints for us is the perfect reminder of that.  Many times I think the HUMANITY of the Christmas story gets lost in the shuffle.  We sing about baby Jesus and how he never cried.  We see paintings of Mary with a literal glowing halo around her head.  We set up nativity scenes depicting this angelic setting with pure white lambs and donkeys that look as though they've just come from the groomer.  We sing about how Jesus was unblemished...the perfect spotless Lamb.  And don't get me wrong...He was.  He IS!  But He was human...

He "took on flesh".  In my mind, that means He, in His perfect plan to save all of His own creation, stepped DOWN from Heaven and lived like we do.  He was the spotless Lamb...He lived a sinless life.  But y'all...he was fully human.  Mary gave birth to that baby just the same way mothers around the world give birth to babies every day.  She felt those searing pains, and she LABORED to bring Jesus into this world.  When He arrived, he was far from "spotless" I'm sure.  He took on flesh and all that entails.  Birth is messy...so was His.  And those little white lambs?  I'm sure they were not so much white as they were covered in mud and stinking to high heaven wondering why in the world this little family from Nazareth was invading their little barn in the middle of the night.  Mary and Joseph had to cut that umbilical cord, they had to clean that little baby off and wrap him in torn cloths to keep him warm.  And Mary rocked him and sang to him and comforted him, because really, that little baby Jesus was as much human as you and I are.  God wanted it that way!  Can you imagine what His experience must have been like?  To step down from HEAVEN into humanity and experience every single bit of it as a human just like us?

God didn't orchestrate this story because He wanted us to experience perfection.  He didn't come to earth as a blemish free angel with a halo around his head.  His mother was a child herself...a weary traveler from an extended family with a sordid past.  God incarnated Himself and came to this earth to give us freedom from the need for perfection.   There was not enough blood on earth to ever cover the sins of this world, and God couldn't bear the thought of our striving for perfection still not measuring up.  So He wiped out the need for perfection in that little Bethlehem stable by making CONTENTMENT accessible in the absence of perfection.  He made a way for us to connect with HIM in the midst of our imperfections...

So this Christmas season, and as you go forth into the new year, be reminded that God desires contentment from us.  He wants us to stumble through this messy life in all of our fully blemished HUMAN-ness and strive for peace and rest.  In the end, that perfect peace and rest is our reward in Heaven.  In the meantime, taking time to remember why we are even here at all is incredibly important.  It's how we keep things in perspective.  That's as much a message to myself as it is to anyone else!  God stepped down from Heaven to be near to us.  He took on flesh to identify with us.  He lived His life blame free to make a way for us.  And He died a criminal's death to atone for us.  So in the depths of your striving for ultimate perfection (depths I find myself in frequently), be reminded that perfection is not attainable here on this earth.  What is attainable?  Contentment.  May that be your gift this Christmas and always...

Merry Christmas!

Rach

Choosing Joy

So here we are rounding out yet another year. How can 2017 be coming to a close already??  I feel like I say that every year. How did 365 days go by so quickly?  2017 has been only marginally less brutal than 2016 was. 2017 started with the loss of a “more like family” friend, continued with a giant road block on our road to an MD, stumbled through a literal ropes course of nonsense on our way to then losing my sweet Mimol, followed by suffering a miscarriage, and then starting our December with my best friend having major abdominal surgery to remove a golf ball sized small cell carcinoma from her kidney. Sheesh. Uncle already 2017...

If I sit here and dwell on the negative aspects of this year, I could really go down a rabbit hole y’all. I could cry and cry about how awful life has been. How uncaring and unfeeling some people have been in the midst of all of it. How the end of this year looks SO radically different than I thought it would. Maybe radically different than I hoped it would. Or...

I can lay here and marvel at the GOOD. I can set my mind on the perfect orchestration God has laid out for this year. How incredibly GRATEFUL I am that I didn’t  have to try and  navigate all of these difficult circumstances with Jonathan working 80+ hours a week in a residency like he was “supposed to”.  How blessed I am that he and I are a TEAM and we navigate the messiness of life TOGETHER. How perfectly perfect he is for me...

I can be content in the love and support that has been poured out on me and my family as volley after volley of difficulties have come our way. My heart can swell at the thought of how incredible our friends and community and family have been. How they’ve been our backbone...our rock!  How 2017 has just been punctuated and defined over and over and over again by the generosity and selfless love of the people we have surrounded ourselves with. How our cups run over with gratitude for the people we “do life with”...

I can continue to be shocked and totally pumped at where A Different Kind of Flair  has gone in the last 7 months. From 80 pairs of fundraiser earrings turning into $1,600 donated to the American Cancer Society in honor of Bernice, Sharon, and Debbie to a shocking number  in total sales since July that makes me blush when it pops up on my calculator. How blessed I am by my customer base and how happy I am that a dream is slowly becoming a reality. Pushing through firewalls and glass ceilings on the way to things I NEVER would have imagined could be possible for this little “hobby turned Business”. And how freaking excited Bernice would be at where it is headed!

I can remember how much my Mimol LOVED this time of year and think of how excited she would be to see my house all decorated for Christmas. How elated she would have been to see some of her pieces and her recipes used on our Thanksgiving table. How I can  hear her sweet alto voice singing among the voices of my own church’s choir...

I can smile at the fact that this is the second Christmas in a row I have helped Charlie decorate his house for the season. How happy it would have made Bernice to tell all the stories of all the things coming out of those boxes. How content she would be knowing Christmas would be spent at HER house. I can marvel at the little pieces of her that I see in Greysen. Her curled smile, her love for books and music, that little twinkle in her eye. How my heart breaks and soars at the same time when I think about how happy she would be to watch Jonathan and I raise our family...

I can rejoice in the fact that my sweet Sara is RECOVERING and not requiring chemo after her surgery. I can cheer because I know that this hasn’t taken any time away from the two of us and our future of shenanigans. How happy I am that she can say she’s beat this soon. How excited I am that tonight she is HOME, and she got to see the snow in Houston!  My heart is warmed knowing she’s watching Christmas movies by her fire at home in her beautiful house...

I can feel those same butterflies of excitement when I remember getting to tell my grandmother mere days before she passed that I was giving her great grand baby #10. I can remember the joy of that positive pregnancy test!  And I can kiss my sweet Greysens cheeks and further marvel at the miracle that is his life. Like Mimol always said...he’s my miracle baby!  How special he is to me, to Jonathan, to our family. And what an amazing big brother he WILL be when our time comes again...

While the sting of loss hits hard this year on so many levels, and our “new normal” continues to evolve with the absence of Bernice and Mimol, I can still sit in my living room and honestly say “It is well with my soul”.  The warm glow of our family Christmas tree, the smell of fresh pine, the anticipation of a super fun family vacation to Disney World in a few weeks!  There is so much MORE I have to be grateful, thankful, and HAPPY about than anything else. I’m taking a stand for JOY this year in the midst of pain and uncertainty. And make no mistake y’all...it’s absolutely a CHOICE. I choose joy!  I choose to see the happiness in my little boys face as he grasps a little more deeply the true meaning of Christmas. Christ came to earth because he couldn’t bear the separation. He craved NEARNESS to us just as we crave nearness to each other and to Him. So in these coming weeks, I will bring my family close. We will sit in the warmth of our house, tell stories and remember  our Bernice and Mimol and everyone else we are missing this Christmas, and be near to each other. 2017 threw us yet another bushel of lemons. But we’re still making lemonade y’all...