This Christmas...

There's something 'off' about this Christmas. There's a general calm about it, for me. Almost like it's moving in slow motion and I'm taking pictures or video clips of moments before they pass by. I do that sometimes. Like when Arowyn was born and her first few years, EVERYONE said how fast it all flies by, and it does ;). So along with a camera fused to my fingers(I took pictures in the GROCERY store of all places) I took hold of moments, I felt the very air around me and cemented the sights, touch, smells, emotions like a cast in my senses.

For example, I can revisit my first Mother's day and it's like I'm reliving a certain moment when I was rocking Arowyn in my arms (one of the only times she let me snuggle her till she was almost 2) singing "Hush my Dear". I feel the weight of her little body in my arms. Such a big baby for us! I see the slant of the late afternoon light filtering through to our little one bedroom apartment living room. I feel the alternating cool, warm air of spring moving in from outside as I open the screened porch, both airs pulling for dominance. But either way, I'm warm, Arowyn is my little heater. I hear cars and birds and the quiet of peaceful. I remember my world until then, all the wrongness and ugliness that had been a part of our lives for so long, it's distant now. So much so that it blurs and and my new reality is birthed.

But back then that moment grabbing, memory imprinting impulse was more inward. A result of the intent of my heart. This reminder I write of seems to be coming from outside me...it's the same feeling you get when reading through the comments on facebook and a message fades in that someone commented on something you commented on too. You regard while continuing on with what you were focused on originally. Just so, I've felt this gentle cautionary note fade into my thoughts to remember, that next Christmas is not a 'given'.

The fact is there are "lasts" for everyone and I don't mean to be morbid or strange and I really have no idea what, but the thought that has stayed with me seems almost like a promise that next year will not "look" like this one. Let me be clear...I don't feel impending doom. (I don't believe, as true followers of Christ, we can align ourselves with doomsday theorist, ie end of the world in 2012.) Only change. Drastic change. Today was the first time I understood the impression I've been under the last few months. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if this ambiguous feeling was what prompted me to meet my biological father. The impression that this was a final opportunity...this was it, if ever it was to be. I thought it had only to do with him...but the impression has not ceased since then, it's increased.

Whatever does that mean??? Perhaps nothing...Perhaps I'm entering into a phase in my Christian faith where the truest reality of all is becoming a closer reality to me. Though dying, we are eternal, this world is passing away, I am a new Creation in Christ. What have I done this Christmas of ETERNAL VALUE. And though there is no condemnation I'm under, and this has been a blessed season of merriment and cheer, there seems to be a turning in my heart towards the heaven, like a glance that has become a gaze.

Anyway, just musing aloud...on 'paper' ;)
Merry Christmas Everyone...for a Merry Christmas it has been!