Merry your Christmas! Can I use merry as a verb? Attach merriment to your holiday! Inject it! Frost your Christmastime with it just like the awesome white frosting on the funfetti cupcakes at work yesterday!
I am really starting to believe that joy (also happiness, merriment, contentment) is in the mindset. What is Christmas to you? I was driving to Wegmans and thinking about all the reasons why the next few days could be miserable for so many people I know. I realized that for Timmy and Chris the next many Christmases have the potential to be terrible. Saturday Dec. 26, two days from now, they are probably pulling the plug on their grandma’s ventilator. So they get the 23rd thru the morning of the 26th to contemplate life without the one who raised them and has been housing them all their life. Every Christmas will now be a reminder of her and how she isn’t here anymore. “Merry Christmas, remember your grandma?” That is a reality for many of us in our own way.
I thought about how this holiday was hard on so many people. I thought about how many parents must be miserable because they can’t give their kids anything for Christmas, and how many kids don’t get anything while their friends do. Then it hit me like a hockey puck. (I got hit in the ankle last night by a puck. Sorry but I have to keep it real. Insert your own analogy!) We all talk about how we hate how commercial Christmas is. That’s just part of it. I started to think about why we ALL could be happy. Merry. Chris and Timmy were given a gift in their grandma. She is a christian. What I mean is that she has acknowledged that the God who created all loves her and has made a way for her to be with Him in heaven when she is done on this earth. Her time has come. She is leaving the pain, the hurt, the misery of cold and loneliness, the agony of this life with all of it’s losses and discomforts for eternal comfort. Timmy and Chris get to know that and find relief from their grief in that knowledge. We can ALL find relief in that thought both for our losses but also in the hope we have in the Son of God who was born, lived like us with all of our cares and hurts, and died for no deserved reason except that it was His will to give Himself as a sacrifice for us. Unto us a child is born. Unto us a Savior is given. We are saved. We are given hope. Not a hope in what might happen, but hope in what is going to happen.
Bad things happen to both good and bad people because bad things happen. I have found myself questioning the love and care of the God I believe in purely based upon what kind of things and comforts I have. The reality of the situation is that my soul was saved and is assured for all eternity. All I have to do is endure for a short time here. Endure. Please endure. How utterly short sighted we are when we fix our eyes on the things that surround us, when we wallow in the grief that holds us for as long as we let it. Bad things happen. Pain happens. It is foolish to think that any one of us can be exempt from the pains of life and death.Tim and Chris will hurt. It is a reasonable response. I hope I can be there to help and offer hope while confusion and grief clouds reason.
Lift your eyes to the horizon that is approaching fast and see what lies beyond. Life is but a breath and then it is gone. Eternity waits to have us either with joy or pain. Mine is a future of joy, and so I am merry:) May your Christmas be too. Let it be.
jb
JB's Blog 
I agree that joy is all in the mindset. You have the old scrooge that has money; possibly fame and fortune but still feel an emptiness, as if they were a beggar lying in the streets. However, You may also be the beggar that just found ten dollars lying in a puddle next to the curb. This will provide food and other possibilities for that day.
However, with all that said, the one thing that we have that neither of the previously mentioned have is an abundance of friends. We have a little bit of money and friends and the one thing that I can say about this area is that money never holds us back from having a good time. We share our finances in order to pick up for a friend who is down or simply cannot afford something at the moment.
So, as friends we are here to influence and provide joy to each other. Merriment is contagious and we all can forget our problems while in the presence of one another. We are the happiest people alive! Thanks for being my best friend bro!
you need to blog more. the end.