I attended March for Gaza on January 13, 2024 with six of my kids, along with thousands of other people. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when there was almost no news coverage of the event.
Even when I searched for coverage, anemic articles a couple of paragraphs long described the protest. Longer articles mentioned the DC event, but focused more on other protests that happened around the world the same day, particularly in Paris and London. Several articles implied that the DC protest was characterized by violence.
I was at the DC protest.
I will bear witness if the media won’t.
Several years after that, I posted similar sentiments. We struggled to get a tree in a timely fashion, which meant we had to drive from tree farm to tree farm only to find all the U-cut trees sold out and the precut pickings slim. It was hard to get the holiday foods made. One year we never decorated the tree at all.
This summer I got TMS and blasted the depression out of my brain, although I hated every second of it. I’m pretty sure this is the first Christmas I haven’t been depressed in my entire adult life.
My emotional cell membrane is vapor-thin these days. Everything makes me cry. Mainly the pain in the world, and there is a whole lot of that.
It feels like every interaction is a reminder of how difficult life is. Positive interactions make me cry because I can’t take kindness for granted anymore. Negative interactions make me cry, often because it’s frustrating when seemingly simple things are complicated because of rigid thinking or bureaucracy or both.
I discovered recently that there are whole playlists of sad Christmas songs. Sometimes they are actually sad (I’m looking with heart eyes at Sia’s “Snowman”) and some just sound sad (Sarah Mclaughlin’s Wintersong Album). Either way, I am here for it.
For my entire life, I have had a prayer habit. For my entire life, I have also been afraid of God. Not the fear full of awe. The distrustful fear of a person who has been hurt.
The God I was introduced to was never satisfied with me just the way I was. I assumed if I prayed for guidance, that when God answered, it would be with a demand for change on my part. Never mind that when I’ve actually asked for and received guidance, the most clear and meaningful messages I got were those of reassurance and acceptance.
