“…the life I yearned for so badly and the Christmas I dreamed of with a happy marriage and family of my own felt out of reach and completely hopeless.”
“I hate Christmas! I wish I could sleep right through it and wake up for January,” I would say year after year as the Holiday season approached once again.
In my late thirties and soon approaching forty years old and still a single woman, I had grown weary of watching happy families with picture perfect houses in neighborhoods they shared with other families, who appeared to have it all. Beautiful houses decorated and lit up from end to end with cars lining the driveways and streets outside as friends and families gathered to celebrate and enjoy food, fun, and fellowship. It seemed like everyone was out shopping for gifts for their loved ones, and they were having such fun being together. Children were out of school, and many people had paid time off from work for at least one week and frequently two weeks of the Christmas holidays. I would hear associates and friends discuss their excitement about their plans with their families or the fun places they were traveling with their husband and children for the season.
“What did I do wrong?” I would ask myself and cry out to God, and frequently to my parents. “Why can’t I have love like that in my life? Why do I have to be alone again this Christmas, without a husband and a family? And God forbid I take any time off of work. What would I do? Stay at home alone? Or go to my parent’s house by myself?” That just wasn’t an option.
Every year, I would say, “I hope that this is the last year I will have to go through this.” Yet, there I was again, in my pity and misery. I would work as hard as I could, seeing clients right up until Christmas Eve, to postpone driving to see my parents until the last minute. Though I loved them very much and have the most amazing, loving parents in the world, being my age and spending Christmas alone with my parents year after year wasn’t the greatest of fun.
I have a small, close family, so most Christmases, we would visit my brother, for a day or two. My brother is happily married with five incredible children, so in my mind, their Christmas was picture perfect too. Sadly, I wasn’t even able to enjoy spending time with them without feeling heartbroken that even my brother had gotten it right, and I didn’t. I was more miserable around him and his beautiful, happy family than I was being alone in my house because the life I yearned for so badly and the Christmas I dreamed of with a happy marriage and family of my own felt out of reach and completely hopeless.
Growing up, Christmas with my family had been so fun and so special. We laughed. We shared. We went to church. We decorated. We traveled. We enjoyed every moment with good friends and family. But after my college years, Christmas became a thorn in my side, as I was reminded every year, “Here you are again. It’s just you and your parents, and everybody else has a family of their own. You’re an outsider. A part of nothing of your own. You don’t belong anywhere. Christmas isn’t for you.”
Despite knowing God and recognizing that the real purpose of Christmas is celebrating God’s immense love for us through the birth of His son, Jesus, I would feel rejected and overlooked. “I know He’s a loving God, but He must not love me”, I would say. “That must have been for everybody else, and I am left out because I sure don’t feel loved.”
Sure, at different times, I would be in relationships at Christmas, but it was always disappointing because it was never the right relationship, or it wasn’t like I thought it was supposed to be. Either he didn’t appreciate Christmas like I did, or I was lower on his priority list than I wanted to be, and it never turned out like I hoped. I had other single friends, who shared my pain, but either they had a boyfriend or they didn’t feel as alone and left out as I did, or they at least could put their longing aside long enough to at least enjoy spending Christmas with their family. I was convinced no one had it as bad as me.
As I turned forty years old, I dreaded Christmas even more, and I ached in my loneliness and hopelessness of ever having the life and family of my own I wanted. Yet, I decided I was willing to do whatever I had to do to make it different. To make it better! If I was going to have to be alone, I was going to find a way to finally be happy. I couldn’t even imagine that thought, but I was at the point that it was either find a way, or just quit altogether.
I thought to myself, “If there is something I am doing wrong, or if there is some curse on me, I am going to find out and change it.” I was willing to do anything it took including changing careers, selling everything I owned and moving wherever or traveling and finding myself, even if it meant finally actually sitting in my pain and really seeking God for His answers instead of being open to hear only the answer I wanted from Him. I had nothing to lose. I was tired of living a life that was not my own, and I was tired of not enjoying it.
This last year, though incredibly painful, scary, and lonely at times, has been a year of tremendous self-discovery and growth for me. I have faced all of my deepest darkest fears head on, having no idea what I would find or what would happen along this process. But I was willing. I was desperate for life. I was desperate for love. So I dove in headfirst (which is the only way I know how to do anything).
This year, I went through an intensive spiritual deliverance process. I worked with an incredible life coach and spiritual mentor in redefining my business, my life, and my relationships, most importantly the one I have with myself. I prepared my house to be ready to put on the market if that was necessary, and I detached from my “things” as I could be ready to sell them too if that was needed. I worked hard and paid off debt that I had accumulated for years by trying to fill my empty hole in my heart with material items that could never fill it. I opened my own private counseling and coaching practice, and redefined my career goals and dreams. I started writing all of the thoughts, feelings, insights, and revelations I experienced inside in blogs, and I plan to begin writing my story to share with the world in a future book.
I took a friend’s family into my home, as they needed a place to live, and they have become like a second family to me. I actually now live with a teenage girl who is like a daughter to me, with whom I share my love for sports and animals. I have a second mother who not only takes care of me, but also my home, and she is a dear friend and spiritual adviser. I have spent time with myself, finding out who I really am and what I really desire in the depths of my heart. And I have put my dating life on the back-burner, being open to meeting a man, only if he pursues me and only if he is willing and able to offer his whole heart to me.
Also this year, I rekindled a college friendship with a girl who, I didn’t know after twenty years of having no contact, was living right in my community. We began running together, and soon, she introduced me to the most amazing group of women (my Running Buddies) who are now dear friends with whom I share life, and a weekly Bible Study. I became more involved in my church and began volunteering in the Care Network Ministry. I’ve run a couple of half marathons, and I started doing Cross-fit. I returned to playing tennis, and I joined a ladies tennis team with more newly found friends. The beautiful women God has placed in my path over the past year have supported me, loved me, and shared their hearts and their lives with me in incredible ways. That has been a gift of love I never knew existed.
This fall I went on a life-altering spiritual retreat to a horse ranch with several other close girl friends I have made over the last couple of years, and I “found myself” in the desert, not to mention, a new-found love for horses. Upon returning, I began horseback riding lessons, and spending any extra time I had at the barn bonding with the horses and learning all about them. I just recently bought my own horse, and what a beautiful soul she is to me.
A few weeks ago, I turned forty-one years old. As I look back over this year, I realize that this was finally the year that I have learned how to love myself, how to open up to and really love others and how to receive their love for me. I have finally learned the art and the beauty of creating and live the life that I love.
I thought that I couldn’t enjoy Christmas, or life for that matter, until I was married to a loving husband, and until I had children of my own. Year after year, all I wanted for Christmas and in life for that matter, was to find love, to be loved. Yet, what I didn’t realize was that finding love and being loved didn’t just exist in the picture of marriage and family I had created in my limited mind.
I failed to see that God has been loving me daily in all of the tiny details of my life, with each blessing He bestows upon me. With each new friend, with sweet, loving animals (as my black lab is lying beside me at this very moment, and my kitten is sitting on my lap purring). He has blessed me with an amazing family, and now a second family who shares my home and my life. He has blessed me with the gift of health, and with the gift of ministering to my clients and walking beside them in the beautiful stories He is writing in their lives. With exciting new endeavors in my career including writing, presenting, speaking, and facilitating coaching groups. With new adventures every moment of every day when I show up in my life and am present and open to receive.
And this Christmas, I plan to stay home with my new second family, in our “zoo”, as we like to call it, admiring the beautiful live Christmas tree adorned with ornaments that are each very special to my heart in some way. My parents are coming to my house for Christmas day, and I have had a ball buying special presents, which I hope, will speak to each person’s heart in some special way. This holiday season, I plan to enjoy every moment of time off with family and friends, and with my animals, my horse at the barn, and on the tennis courts, too, of course. We now have 8 beautiful stockings hung on the mantle, for each of our family members, human and furry ones alike. And most importantly, I will take time to enjoy the Beauty that my God reveals to me in the world every day and His immeasurable love for me as His chosen daughter.
What I have learned most this year, and what I am now able to see clearly is that as God promises, He always honors the truest desires of our hearts. For God is Love, and everything He does is out of love, so His very essence is in honoring our desire for love. Yet we are not able to see it or open ourselves to receive the love we desire when we are focused only on our limited picture of what that is supposed to look like, especially if we are looking for it in places that are not from or of Him.
By focusing only on my picture of what love and life were supposed to look like, along with being blinded by my deep fear and unbelief, I remained lost in my own life for forty years. I see now that I was keeping myself in the darkness and futility of my own desert, like the Israelites who kept themselves out of the promise land for so many years. Yet, like the Israelites, God fed me manna everyday, which sustained me, until I was ready to believe and receive the land “full of milk and honey” that God had for me, just outside of the blinders I was wearing.
So, the truth is that I really wasn’t overlooked, forgotten, or missed after all. I was the one missing it. I was missing Him. I was missing His love and missing out on His gift of love all around me the whole time. But Thankfully, His love is unending, and He offered it unfailing until I was ready to receive it, to claim it as my own. This Christmas, I thank God that He is the greatest gift giver of all. And I am thankful that I am so very loved.