A Single Mom At Christmas Time
Gift giving is one of the 5 love languages (https://www.5lovelanguages.com). I mean who doesn’t love gifts, but I feel a deep inner joy and satisfaction when I find great gifts for my friends and family—it's so fun for me! On the flipside, I also feel loved when I receive gifts.
Christmas was always very celebratory pre-divorce, spending the night as a big family and waking to the sound of "Ho Ho Ho’s!". Christmas morning was filled with yummy comfort food, human pyramids, laughter, family hugs, reminiscing about fun childhood stories, and exchanging gifts in birth order.
Christmastime during divorce was hard. I had this deep grief in my heart that the holidays now were never going to be the same.
And—although this may seem superficial—even as a grown woman, there still remains something special about the tradition of exchanging gifts with loved ones and having a couple for myself to open.
Fast forward. It was my third Christmas after the divorce, and my daughter’s and my first Christmas in our tiny home. #tinyhouseliving
I had been working on a list of things I knew my daughter would like for Christmas. The list was small, as I was on a "single mom budget” trying to figure out my financial future. My daughter was allowed to pick out three "larger" gifts and then I would fill her stocking with little things and perhaps 1-2 additional little surprise gifts. I felt sad about not showering her with more gifts.
I know, I know: "it's not about the gifts." It's about celebrating the birth of Christ. But in our culture, Christmas is about family with a high focus on gifts. If you're like me, you have spent countless hours thinking about and shopping for gifts, not to mention the boatloads of money we spend as a nation (over $30 billion/year during the Christmas season https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/money-mentor/how-much-are-americans-spending-this-holiday-season).
Now, instead of lots of fun gifts wrapped beautifully under the tree, my daughter and I enjoy hot cocoa with marshmallows, create and decorate gingerbread houses, bake Jesus birthday cakes & sing, play board/card games, and pray together. These have become some of our new Christmas traditions.
Yet even with all these new traditions, my mama’s heart still felt sad and inadequate that I wasn't showering her with more gifts. To top it off, I also had a second wave of unexpected sadness wash over me—it was a desire to make a Christmas list for myself.
Where is this desire coming from? I pushed the thought aside. The desire came back a couple days later. (I've learned to pay attention to these random thoughts—especially when they recur—and to bring them to God.)
So I ventured, "Lord, I feel awkward but I feel sad. I’m wanting to make a list for myself but there’s no one to give the list to. I cant even give the list to You.”
Let me preface the rest of this story by saying the stress and trauma of divorce caused my memory to not be as good as it used to be. So, this little conversation with the Lord flew out of my head. I had pulled up my little bootstraps and kept moving forward.
A couple weeks passed when a friend texted: "A group of us at church were praying, and the Lord specifically put you and your daughter on our hearts. We want to buy presents for you both. Send us her Christmas wish list, and send us YOUR list!"
So many feelings.
Shock. Awe. Gratitude. Perplexed.
I'm bawling tears even now as I write this, thinking about how sweet the goodness of God is.
You guys! I hadn't told anybody about my 3 gift limitation for my daughter or about this out-of-the-blue desire to make a Christmas list for myself. I had forgotten about this all together.
But—the Lord remembered. It was as though God had tucked my grief and desire into the pocket of His heart and pulled it out at a later time to knock my socks off.
In the same way that He holds all of our tears in jars (Ps. 56:8), He also remembers all our prayers. Even the ones we forget we've prayed.
He remembers our grief and our deepest desires.
He came through and provided an abundance of amazing Christmas gifts for my daughter and I, likewise He comes through showing us He is with us at all times. Seeing every dimension of our longings.
Emmanuel. He's with us. He's intimately involved in every aspect of our lives.
We can bring our sadness and disappointments to God. They don't get old to Him. Even the ones that seem small… like a single mom’s Christmas wish lists for her daughter and herself. —Especially the single mom and her kids! FAMILY is one of God’s favorite, most valuable things.
He longs to heal our hearts. That's the kind of God He is. Where are you at today with grief, sadness, and longings?
TODAY'S CHALLENGE
| 1 |
What longing or area of sadness or disappointment do you want God to hold for you today? Take a moment, and give God permission to hold these.
| 2 |
Ask God if there is anything He wants to say to you about these longings or feelings.
God is our great counselor (Is. 9:6 b). Share your thoughts with Him when these longings and feelings start to burden you. Verbally remind yourself He is taking care of your heart and cares about these things.
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