Let the first Christmas be your guide ....

By Coach Brenda

Let the first Christmas be your guide as you enter this holiday season. No, I'm not suggesting that you decide to take a long journey on the back of sub par transportation and sleep overnight in the parking garage of an inn, entertaining strange dignitaries against a background of heralding heavenly beings. What I am talking about is this..

Life dealt Mary what appeared to be an unfair hand. Being found with child in an unmarried state was not the life that Mary had dreamed of. The circumstances that Mary found herself in were not easily understood by her family and friends. Living in a small village meant that her community--her social, spiritual, and family circles--would all have known that she was pregnant without the benefit of a husband. Mary was undoubtedly faced with rumors, whisperings, finger pointing and judgments. Additionally, the man that she loved--Joseph, was being advised by friends to leave her and have her put quietly away.

No doubt you can identify with being handed something which by all appearances looks like your own unfair hand. Your little girl dreams did not prepare you for the land of betrayal and lies, for the unwilling sharing of your prince charming with hideous and disfigured ghosts and ghouls. Your life has been changed by decisions and circumstances that were unknown to you and for which you were not consulted. People who you once knew as friends and family are now distant or have taken on roles that are not supportive, which leaves you feeling further betrayed, alienated and alone.

From Mary we learn that sometimes only God can know and understand the truth about what is really going on in our lives. Like Mary we can decide who we want to be in spite of our circumstances and determine to act out of those decisions. Like Mary we can trust God for our futures even though the present feels unsure. Like Mary we can know that God's best is at work in our lives even when life is at its worst.

I think there is another important message here for us in that the first Christmas was one of humble simplicity. As we think about all that we have done in the past to create the perfect Christmases for our families and friends, I want to challenge you to think of ways to save the essence of the day without having to busy yourself with the trappings. As Christmas was an expression of God's grace to the world how can you express grace to yourself as you go about making decisions on what you will give of yourself to your family and friends?

The holiday after I found out that my husband had been involved with three different women--one for over four years, I decided to order our holiday dinner from a local grocer. My emotional energy was spent and I did not have the energy to put on our normal holiday fare. I decided to honor the place that my life had been placed in by keeping things very simple and not adding any more stress to an already overly stressed situation.

Determine now what your priorities will be and maximize the energy that you have in spending time only on those things that are most important to you. This may mean that you forgo traditions, parties or gatherings with people or organizations that are farther down your priority list or may have fallen off your list completely. This may mean that you decide not to spend time with family or friends who are not supportive of your current state or who have historically been an energy drain. Determine this year to pay special attention to those things that you most need and want.

This may be a good time to decide once and for all that you are hanging up or burning your people-pleaser hat as a gift to yourself. Your life has changed so don't present a lie to the world by pretending that it hasn't. Embrace this new place as a new beginning. Use this time to nurture the hurting places in your life and to work towards creating a support structure that makes sense to you and from which you can gain lifeMary's story was part of a work that God put into play to redeem a broken and fallen world. This chapter of the story of your life has not taken God by surprise. God still redeems the broken and fallen and He does his best work in those situations which the world has deemed impossible. Determine this year to wrap up all of those impossibilities with which you are now faced and present them to the One that can redeem them into something wonderful and new.