Merry Christmas???

Christmas is without a doubt my favorite time of year. Even during the horrible times, like the year when my grandfather passed away on December 23 and was buried on my 16th birthday or the first Christmas after my mom died. Some how I was able to bounce back, if you will, and celebrate the ultimate gift of the Messiah's birth.
I love the smell of baking cookies, sweet smelling candles and lights glistening against the white snow. You can hear the message of Jesus Christ in the songs on the radio, the kindness of strangers and pageants, plays and cantata's at our churches. I liken it as a cat to catnip as I get an itch to begin my Christmas shopping in late October and begin making my lists of baking, crafts and other fun things to do with Korbin.
And as 2008 began on such a high note for me with the answer to the prayer of having my gastric bypass, I foolishly thought that this Christmas would be the climax to a wonderful year. However, that is just not the case as we begin the month of December with my husband unemployed and looking for another job. On Monday, December 1 after he put in yet another twelve hour day at his former company he was called into a meeting where he was told that his company is unable to pay his pay check any longer and discontinued his employment. Deflated and disheartened, my wonderful husband drove an hour and a half home to inform Korbin and I that he no longer had means to financially provide for our family.
He was sad, and I was enraged!!! Twenty four stinking days prior to Christmas, he was laid off by an employer who claimed to care for his employee's, which is what the CEO and Rod's direct boss told me over and over again when I called his office on the hour when Rod was in the hospital in September. The wording that rings in my ears over and over again is his boss's voice saying " Don't worry Mrs. B**** we are a family here and we take care of each other!" If this is his idea of taking care of each other, discontinuing a man's employment with a wife and a small child right before Christmas, I would hate to see what he does for people he does not want to take care off.
I want to yell, scream, and curse evilness upon his company and this man's head. Yet, as mad as I am, I can not seem to do anything but feel anything but sadness for us and for him and his company. Rod wishes him nothing but personal and professional success. That shows extreme Christan growth on my husbands part, because as for me I am more than mad at how this man and his company took advantage of and disrespected the man I gave my love and my life too.
In the middle of this turmoil in our country as we face an economic crisis, and the uncertainty that we face to determine if we can make ends meat or not, I have a peace in the depths of my soul that does not make sense to my head but makes my heart breathe a sigh of relief. It is the same peace that I have been missing in recent months, but experience to the innth degree proceeding my wls.
I know that I serve an Amazing God that is prayer hearing and prayer answering to those who serve Him with their lives by giving their hearts to His son Jesus Christs who bore our sins upon the cross of Calvary.
So, in knowing this, I know also that this did not happen without God allowing it and having a plan for it. However, as much as I know that digesting what this means is what I am having the problem with.
This means, foregoing the climactic Christmas I had been anticipating celebrating for the first time in years. I had searched high and low for the items on Korbins Christmas list looking forwaed to his happy response on Christmas morning and excitedly anticipated receiving clothes for Christmas that I could actually put on and wear for the first time since I was in high school or buy a new dress to wear to chruch. Or receiving the bracelet or anniversary band I had been hinting around at getting for the last 3 years. To go beyond that, even enjoying my birthday, which is two days after christmas, for the first time since I lost my grandfather 16 years ago.
Sigh.. those things were not to meant to happen this year, this year I guess. However, it is not going to detour me or my family from celebrating the greatest gift ever given to mankind; the Christ child.
Each year I decorate our Christmas tree in red and white to remind us of the purity of that baby born in a manger. With the red to show us that they baby grew up to be a man who came to save his people for their sins ans shed his life's blood on the cross of Calvary for you and for me. Regardless of what or what not is under that tree, those two facts still remain. And those are causes for celebration!!