Let's be honest, Christmas this year was very bittersweet for us. I love Christmas because I love spending extra time with people, especially my family and close friends. Yes, the shopping and gift things are fun (for the most part!), for me, Christmas is about time with those you love. For us, those we love, was incomplete without Eli, Isaac, and Micah. So although there were a fair share of tears, there was also plenty of smiles, laughing and celebrating.
Remembering and celebrating the birthday of Jesus was different for us this year. I felt on some level like I could begin to relate to the feelings God must have experienced in sending his only child to earth. I think about the difficult emotions we have experienced in giving up our only children to go to a place where we know they are loved perfectly and completely. Where they are able to live a perfect life, to be free of sin and the burdens of this world. Yet no matter how perfect of a place I know they are in, it doesn't take away the pain of our separation. The pain and sorrow are unreal. Then I think about what it must have been like for God. To give up your child to go to a place where you knew they would be kind of loved by a few, but mostly an outcast--rejected, scorned, hated, and murdered. I cannot imagine the dispair of such a separation, the heartbreak and pain, and the love involved in such a gift. This Christmas as we have dealt with the painful separation from our children, we were able to see and appreciate the gift God gave us in Jesus, in a whole new way. What a beautiful, amazing, selfless gift he gave to us.
For God so LOVED the WORLD that he gave his ONE and ONLY SON.......
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