reflective thoughts and a little bit of inspired writing

 

Happy Tuesday to you, friends, and merry Christmas Adam! My friend Marcia always called this day that, because Adam came before Eve. I say it all the time and laugh when I think of her explaining this to me all those years ago. 

What are your plans for today? Mine are pretty simple; I'm having a leisurely morning which feels great after a very fitful night of sleep. Do you ever have those nights when your dreaming keeps you awake? This happened to me last night; I had three separate nightmares about people in my family dying. It was terrible! I got up at some point and moved to a recliner to see if the change of positioning would help me to stop dreaming. It did help, and I stayed there until 7:30. It feels great to sleep without waking up to an alarm! I've missed those days. 🤣

Eventually, I'll wander upstairs to shower before meeting some friends for lunch at noon. I have (yet another) grocery order coming today between one-three, and then I'll see Chris after he gets off work today. I feel like I'll definitely be cooking something; with all this food, I definitely need to put some of it to good use! It's rainy here as I write this, but hopefully that will move on and Jonah can grill us hamburgers for dinner. 

All this to say, I'm feeling reflective and grateful today. I thought I'd share a few of those thoughts with you on this quiet morning when two of my four sons are still sleeping away upstairs. I love having them home; it feels like the days when they were teenagers, and I've seen Jonah more this week than I usually do. My heart truly fills up when I have them at home, and I think I'll see them all tonight! Alright, here's my writing for this reflective morning.

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The Tuesday before Christmas feels like a pause more than a day. The wrapping is almost done, the calendar is nearly full, the world seems to be humming softly in anticipation. It's not loud like the weekend or sparkling like what's ahead—it's tender. 

Today holds the in-between moments: the deep breath before the joy, the remembering before the celebrating. I notice how much has been carried this year—what was lost, what was healed, what quietly grew.

The Tuesday before Christmas invites me to slow down just enough to be grateful for where I am, for the love that found me again, for the peace I didn't know I could have.

It's a gentle reminder that Christmas isn't only arriving—it's already here, in the stillness, in the reflection, in this holy and ordinary day.

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I've been feeling a lot of emotions lately; I've cried more than I have in a long time, I've been mad all over again, and I've been really sad. I do not miss my ex-husband, but I miss what my life used to look like. I miss the way I thought my forever would look: empty nesters together, us finally being able to do all the things we had always wanted to do like traveling and exploring new hobbies together. And now I get really pissed off when I think of him with someone else he thought he could have a better life with. Sorry for the curse word here on my blog, I think that's a first, but sometimes there are no other words to adequately express my true feelings.

I know that it wasn't my fault, but I can't quite express what an affair and the end of a marriage is like for a woman; it makes me question my worth, the abilities I thought I had as a wife, why I wasn't good enough, and whether or not our entire marriage was a lie. I know that none of these are the case, because that would mean that I was the one to blame over the death of the marriage. I wasn't perfect, but I was an excellent wife to him; it was his indiscretions that led to the death of the almost 28 year long marriage.

I say all this to explain why I've been feeling this way lately; again, it's not that I miss him. I don't, trust me; my life is so much more peaceful without him in it anymore. I'm content with my life, and even though I've had a rough few weeks with all of these conflicting emotions, I'm feeling extremely grateful. I have amazing people in my life who love me and cheer me on continually. My friends are literally the best in the world, and if not for how my life turned out, I don't know that I would have realized and valued their worth the way I do. I don't have a perfect relationship with my sons; they've seen me at my worst and when I was mad at them, but they've also seen me using great resilience to fight my way back out of whatever funk I was in at the time of that anger. I'm not perfect, but I've done my best as faithfully and as diligently as I knew how. I'm glad it seems as if people think I'm tough; I don't feel that's the case, but it seems they think that, based on how I keep getting treated.

So yes, once again this year, Christmas feels different. Different does not equal bad, it just means that it's different. I will definitely be filling my cup with some of what this graphic suggests at the top of this post: I plan on spending time with friends, I plan on seeing lots of Chris because he makes my heart happy, I will see all of my sons that I can, I'll continue to listen to music (and am doing that now as I write this), I got to serve dinner to families with kids in a children's hospital last night, and I hope to finish the book I started last week. I also plan on finishing my Bible reading plan for the year and journaling more of these emotions that I keep experiencing. 

How will you recharge this Christmas? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for being here to read; I didn't know the writing would take this kind of a turn, but I'll let it be what it is. Merry Christmas Adam and much, much love to you. 

Jenn