Sorry for my silence over the weekend. I haven’t felt much like writing.

There are many thoughts swimming in my head, many conversations God and I have engaged in over the last few days. I just don’t know how to condense them down into posts… and I’m still grappling with many of the issues anyway.

One such issue is growing bigger as the days near December 25th. Last year was the hardest Christmas I ever had; the first without mom and dad.

I thought it would be easier this year. But I’m already struggling and Christmas is still 20 days away. I finally decorated up the apartment. It just felt to "sterile" not to have Christmas lights, garlands and a small Christmas tree. But it hasn’t gotten me into the "Christmas Spirit". I went for a drive yesterday and just enjoyed the beauty of decorated homes and the crisp cold of a Nashville winter night. Even during my drive my sadness deepened.

This season — Thanksgiving thru New Years’ — used to be my favorite time of year, with just the perfect blend of cold weather, warm feelings, holiday magic and incredible scents. I hope someday it will be my favorite again. Right now, it’s the time of year I feel mom and dad’s deaths most profoundly. They gained the greatest gift — finally they are Home for Christmas. But their, and heaven’s, gain is my loss.

I long to spend just one more Christmas with them. To hear mom’s laughter ring throughout the house. To smell her pies baking, taste her candies — she made the best Peanut Brittle, Fudge, Ginger Snaps and "Scotchies’ the world has ever known! — and listen to her play Christmas Carols on the piano… To hear dad read the Christmas story one more time, see him in that silly Santa hat handing out the presents… just to get one more hug and kiss from them, or lay in bed and hear them through the wall talking and laughing with each other at the end of the day…

Emotions sweep over me and threaten to overwhelm me. I cling to God’s promises to always be with me, that the water will not sweep me away nor will the flames I walk through set me ablaze.

This is a time of year portrayed in movies, commercials and church pageants as being "the most wonderful and happiest time of the year," as the song goes. But I wonder: how happy is it for most people, really.

How many others are there like me, who are just putting one foot in front of the other and praying to any god they know that they will make it through the season without a total emotional breakdown? How many turn down our invitations to our Christmas pageants because they just can’t bear to see another "It’s A Wonderful Life" like presentation about how all’s well and at peace with the world because Jesus was born? How many are haunted by memories of Christmas’s past, of Christmas wishes never realized, of holidays marked more by fear, abuse, angry words, or loss than by happiness, joy and good gifts?

Where is the Christmas place for them? Where is the place where Christmas isn’t all smiles and candy canes? Where can we experience a Christmas full of depth and meaning for a lost and broken world?