Merry Christmas Eve! always ...

A weird thing has happened recently (being the last two years)... I have become very sentimental on Christmas Eve. For tradition... for the current 'usual', but also for the 'old' usual. For what I did growing up and where I lived. For those individuals lost and the abandoned traditions that will no longer continue to. For the roots I have, and that my family has. I have this strange pulling between joy for the coming, and mourning for the past. 

Maybe I am in a self-induced Ebenezer Scrooge situation? Reflecting on the past while being in the present, and wanting the future to be full of love and hope. Regardless, it is weird how a day you love and that is full of joyful anticipation is simultaneously reminding you of what is and what has been lost... That which is no more ... it's a space that I squirm in and usually run from. 

It hit me as I sang a favorite Christmas song to myself- "Old City Bar" by Trans Siberian Orchestra. The whole thing is a moving story and allegory of life. The lyric that has stuck with me today is this, 

"The child said "I've noticed

If one could be home,
They'd be already there"

If I could control being home in all the things I reflect on holding dear, I'd already be there. But what is true is that every day is Christmas Eve. Every day is wrought with the tension between what is, what has been lost, and what is to come and restore it all. Everyday we are awaiting the arrival again of Jesus. The restoration of home. I think that is the tension I feel most strongly every 'real' Christmas Eve. The tension between what is, has been, and what is to come. The longing for the permanent, unchanging, hope and joy-filled home my heart longs for. So until the time heaven and out permanent home is restored, we keep living out a Christmas Eve. 

Merry Christmas Eve until he returns to you all!