Waiting for Christmas

Things have been busy lately with bridal showers and weddings and teaching school and trying to do some spring cleaning and working on figuring out my life. I've been reflecting on patience and timing and today, somewhat out of the blue, remembered an experience from long ago.

Kids love Christmas. I don't care who you are. There's that feeling that starts as soon as the Christmas season ends--the anticipation for when it will begin again. For most of us, we don't worry too much about it during June and July--it's when the days get shorter and the frost shows up on the windows and the festive songs start playing on the radio. For kids, however, sometimes it seems that the anticipation never takes a break.

One time, much closer to the past Christmas than the upcoming one, some kids began to ask if it was Christmas YET; they wanted it right then. It had been an emotionally trying time in my life--one when I had very specific blessings I wanted fulfilled and answers to come and could not understand what I was doing wrong. It was then, as I heard those kids long for Christmas, that I finally understood. Christmas hadn't come yet not because those kids had been bad, or were just getting coal anyway. It hadn't decided not to come because they didn't believe in Santa Claus. It wasn't even because their parents didn't love them or didn't want them to be happy or because they hadn't earned it. The simple fact was--it wasn't December, and no one (no matter how much they loved those children) could make it be. They would simply have to wait, and in waiting, it would, as promised, come.

And so it is. Sometimes it is not about whether or not we're good or whether or not we deserve it or even whether or not God loves us. Sometimes, it is simply not our December. And so, I have remembered and once again decided to have faith that with time, Christmas will come, but in the meantime, I may as well enjoy summer. :)