Christmas anticipation

Well, it's arrived - the first official day of winter. Not that we needed the calendar to tell us that, 'cuz we've had snow and cold temperatures here for weeks now. It's also three days until Christmas, and it's been a time of anticipation for us. Even though it's our second Christmas with Jess it's our first as a officially minted family. In many ways it feels like it's our first Christmas together. This time last year we were all just getting to know each other. It was the honeymoon phase of Jess' placement, which came to an end after the holiday season and the hard work of building relationships began. But we've had a year of ironing out a lot of the wrinkles (there's still a bit of smoothing out that needs to be done), and in that time we have bonded as a family.

I was talking about this to someone recently and he made a point I never thought of before: Jess has history with us now, and with that history comes the anticipation. It made so much sense! Jess not only has formed a relationship with us, but with my family and Angel's too. My brother Palle's back from his tour in Afghanistan, My niece Jenelle is back in Edmonton on Christmas break from the U of C, and my niece Karlene and her husband Jeffrey are coming up from Calgary this Friday. It's their first Christmas as a married couple, so there are a lot of firsts for the family. And with those firsts also comes the anticipation of others too.

While these are happy firsts, it's not all cheer for everyone. My younger brother and his wife, who for the past four years had been fostering a little girl with a disability, said goodbye to Hannah who went to her forever family at the beginning of the month. It had been their intention to adopt her but for reasons I won't divulge they made the difficult decision to give her up. So they've been grieving their loss at a time of year when loss is keenly felt. Many people do at this time of year, and it reminded me of what Jess' birth mom must have gone through last year, and what she may be feeling this year. For us and for Hannah's new forever family our Christmas blessing came at the expense of someone else's loss. The reasons for those losses are very different, but they are losses nonetheless.

Jess felt the loss too, but differently as it reminded her of the many transitions she had to make before settling in with us. But we helped her work through the emotional turbulence and moved forward with our Christmas preparations. It will be a bitter-sweet Christmas for us all, but we know there's so much to be thankful for. I know I'm looking forward to everyone being together and making new memories as a reconstituted family. And who knows what the family will look like next year, or where we all might be? I say that because I've been mindful of the future lately, and that we could be anticipating some changes in store for the three of us. But that's another post... So wherever you are, whoever you will be with, whatever blessings and losses you are experiencing, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas.

In a month of magic to some and melancholy to others, may we meet the Messiah - the one in the manger who shows us mercy & meaning.