Christmas Tree Redemption

The western holiday season officially began last week with Thanksgiving! There are some things I just love about this time of year- extra time to spend with people I love while we all have a bit more free time as we have off from work, the opportunity to buy gifts for people (and receive gifts! It's always been my top love language, in case you were wondering), quite often there's more chocolate around at the holidays and watching Christmas movies!

However, this season also carries some things that make my heart ache. Each year I find myself un-excited as I think about many of the things that used to give me warm fuzzy feelings. Things like traditions being passed on in families, conversations my friends have about which family members they will spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with, conversations about buying gifts for family members and decorating for Christmas... 

Although I grew up surrounded by people using and selling drugs, adults using money for their own addictions before the needs of the kids in their lives, lots of verbal/emotional abuse and a bit of physical abuse....still, until I was about 10 years old my mom made sure the holidays were special. We decorated our house for every holiday. We had massive Thanksgiving meals at our house, Christmas eve was alwasy spent with family coming to our house and there was always a real, taller than 6 feet Christmas tree piled underneath with gifts! As kids, my cousins, siblings and I were able to obliviously have fun during these times while adults got high and drunk together. When you're a kid you don't care that the gifts came from church charities, they were awesome gifts! 

But, as I got older 

                            I began to realize that every holiday was visited by police officers due to family violence that disturbed the neighbor's holidays....

                           and I began to realize there were other people whose families were really poor and we were taking their spot at those Christmas charities...

                            and I began to realize what hangovers and coming 'down' after a Christmas eve of being high looked like....

Even as I began to understand these not so festive things about my family, decorating the tree was always my favorite part of the holidays because since my mom was an only child we had all the ornaments my grandparents had saved for years.  We would dig into boxes of ornaments that were carefully, individually protected in layers of newspaper and tape. As we unwrapped each one there would be the "ooohhh" and "aaahhh" as the memories were discovered once again.  Glass icicles, tiny bibles with gold lined pages, beautiful bells that we hung on the doors, a full nativity set... I loved that these things were ours, I loved that I knew the stories so well I could recite them, I loved that it was something we all did together each year!

Then there was my 11th Christmas. That year we got the boxes down after the lights had been put on the tree, we opened them and found only about a third of the ornaments and none of the really good ones.  My stepdad had been selling them throughout the year.  

We didn't decorate a tree after that.  My mom went balistic, the police came and decorating a Christmas tree has never been the same again. The rest of the ornaments stayed in their boxes for 3 years and then we were evicted and the landlord burned our stuff. 

Oh, but Jesus is a God of redemption.... Like, really good, sweet, unexpected, amazing redemption! And, I have been made for capturing moments of redemption in my own life and the lives of others.  

 This year I had created a plan for redemption-I would get a small tree and have my friends come over for a meal and they would each make a paper ornament for my tree.  It would be a great way to catch up with lots of people I love and include them in my own new tradition! 

I also know the fact that paper ornaments aren't expected to survive through years so it would be normal to just have new ones each year.  

                        No holding onto things, 

                                                            no getting all sentimental, 

                                                                                                    no chance of things being destroyed. 

I could safely keep my distance from tradition and things mattering to my heart.  

Then, a freind gave me a real ornament before she left for the States in October. I put it in a drawer and thought about it.  

Then, other friends sent me 2 real ornaments  and I kept them in the package hidden from view and thought about it.  

Then, I saw some ornaments at a store here that I thought were beautiful- simple gold and red glittered balls and I didn't buy them but, yep, I thought about them.  

I couldn't bring myself to get past the pain and fear of becoming attached... It felt safer to just do paper and think about the real ones.

On Thanksgiving last week I had plans with 2 of my favorite people, my Khmer brother who has been part of my life for almost 6 years and his girlfriend who I've known for almost 6 months and I love already!  They knew I wanted to make ornaments with them during the day, he even offered to make the star! We went to lunch together and as we returned to my house he said he'd be back and got on his moto and drove off. No big deal, us girls went to my apartment and talked about our upcoming plans to go shopping together.  

After about 20 minutes he returned carrying a plastic bag from a nearby store.  He stood there holding the gifts, looked right at me and said, 

"You deserve real ornaments. God is a giver of good gifts and He has only the best for you."

Then he pulled out the exact ornaments I had been looking at a few weeks ago.  

Seriously-the. exact. ones. 

And a gold star. 

And even a Merry Christmas bow with bells that are now on my door. 

I feel so seen and loved by God through their actions.  He knows our hearts, His timing in our lives is perfect, He delights in restoring and redeeming.  I look at that Christmas tree, my Christmas tree, and I cannot stop smiling, every time! 

God has begun a new thing in my heart and decorating a Christmas tree will never be the same again. 

There are times in life when we experience pain and awful loss of hope but He really does delight in giving joy instead of mourning, beauty instead of ashes and restoring what's been stolen.  

Oh, and I'm still making paper decorations with friends and they are being used to decorate walls and windows :-)

    
                         

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