We got the phone call a week
or so before Christmas. Dad had rapidly deteriorated and there was nothing more
to be done. The end had come.
I made the trip to Kerikeri almost
daily and helped as much as I was able with a breastfeeding four month old. I
didn’t feel like it was enough.
I offered to make the trip
again on Christmas day but my stepmum and aunty insisted they would be fine.
Everyone was coming to our house, it was Conrad’s first Christmas, etc etc etc.
On Christmas evening as I put
Conrad to bed, I caught sight of the bookshelf my dad had bought for him.
I put my child down, came back
out to the lounge, and burst into tears.
“Oh hun, what’s wrong?” asked
The Accountant.
I tried to articulate it. The
guilt I was feeling about not being able to help more. How crappy and unfair it
was that Dad only got to spend four months with his grandson.
What came out between sobs was
“the book shelf.”
Luckily that was all I needed
to say. “I know” said The Accountant as he pulled me in to his arms.
At that moment I knew
Christmas had changed forever. That every Christmas night as I put my children
to bed, or put my grandchildren to bed, or as the health care assistant in the
nursing home puts me to bed, my mind will be on my dad.
I also knew that I wasn’t
alone.
Christmas is a rough time of
year for so many people for so many reasons.
Maybe, like me, you’ve lost a
loved one.
Maybe your family is full of
people you would actively avoid if you didn’t share DNA, and you find spending prolonged
periods with them stressful and upsetting.
Maybe it’s financially
stressful. Because your child desperately wants one of those Hatchimals but
they cost $90 and the cambelt’s just gone on the car and your family has asked you
to bring the ham and you just don’t know where all the money is going to come
from.
Maybe this Christmas marks the
end of another year without the baby you long for. And watching as another
round of friends post photos of their infants in their ‘my first Christmas’
outfits on social media hurts so much it causes you physical pain.
Or, maybe you have a child who
is unwell, and this Christmas will be spent in hospital. Conrad has spent ten
nights in hospital so far, and despite the lovely staff and the playroom it is
always a bleak place to be. I imagine it must feel even more so around
Christmas.
Christmas is rough, but it
shouldn’t be. It’s rough because we put the emphasis on all the wrong things.
It’s all about the decorations
and the food and the presents, the more excess and materialism the better.
But what it should be about,
what it is really about, is hope.
The Christmas story is so well
known it is often taken for granted. But when you stop and think about it,
like, really reflect on it, it’s incredible. The majority of major world
religions involve people striving to be good enough for God. At Christmas we
celebrate God reaching down to us. Loving us. Offering us a second chance.
For
God so loved the world he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in
him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3 v 16.
Christmas also reminds me that
God does not always work the way we expect or want him to. I mean, if I was
God, I would send my son into the world with huge pomp and fanfare! Instead he
was born in a stable, to an average working class family, and hardly anyone was
even aware it had happened.
“For
my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways,” declares the
Lord. “As the heavens are higher than that earth, so are my ways higher than
your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55 v 8
2015 certainly didn’t pan out
the way I expected. We faced financial challenges after failing to do the homework
on the house we bought. My dad was diagnosed with cancer. I gave birth via
emergency surgery to a baby boy who ended up needing his own emergency surgery.
And then, just months after his diagnosis, my father passed away.
I don’t understand why Conrad
had to go through pyloric stenosis. I don’t understand why, despite my desperate
prayers for healing, my dad still died. I don’t understand many things that
happen in my life and the life of my family and friends and the wider world
around me.
But at Christmas I’m reminded
that no matter what, God loves us, and he is moving. It may not be obvious, and
it may not be in the way we expect, but he is with us, and he is moving, and
it’s all going to be ok in the end.
I hope this, my last blog of
2016, finds you well, dear reader. I hope this year has been kind to you and
your family. I hope your Christmas is filled with joy and happiness and all the
things that really matter.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog
this year. I hope it’s given you some hope, that you did not come from nothing
for nothing, but that you are wonderfully made and so dearly loved.
Blessings and love to you all.
From The Accountant, The
Accountant’s wife, Conrad, and bump. X
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