Today, I write....

Christmas is gone.  It has been a very long time since I blogged.  Today's blog is not about weight loss, or the lack thereof.  Today, I just feel like I need to write.

I always have a sense of loss when I take down my Christmas decorations.  I just feel like my house seems empty without them.  I love my decorations.  I love how my house looks with the decorations.  Thus, the sadness.

But it's 4 days after Christmas, and this year, the sadness is worse.  Today, I feel like I am betraying many by taking the decorations down.  I feel as if, by taking down the decorations today, I am accepting this season and all that has happened.  I am accepting the loss of a dear friend, long before we were ready to let him go.  I am accepting the many lives that were lost in a senseless act of evil on the very same day my dear friend left this world and met our Savior face-to-face.  I am accepting that it is the end of another year, and I feel as if I've accomplished nothing.  I am accepting that, in my city as well as cities not so very far from here, people have lost their lives in other senseless acts every day for the past month or so. 

I can't accept those things.  Yet, by taking down my Christmas decorations, I feel as though I am accepting them and moving on with my life, even if I'm not ready to do that.

I somehow feel that, if I left my Christmas decorations up, things would be different.  Things would go back to the way they were.  Like I could bring my friend back.  Like I could bring back all the lives that have been ripped from this earth through no choice of their own.  Like I could somehow have a sense of accomplishment.  If my Christmas decorations were still up.

So, how am I going to get past this funk????  A few Scriptures ring in my head. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."  "His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts."  "Greater is He than is in me than he that is in the world." 

So there it is.  I do not trust the Lord because I understand His ways.  It is because I do not understand His ways that I trust in HIM.  Even as I typed these paraphrased Scriptures, my burden seemed to lighten.  His Word is life.  His Word is healing. 

And today I wrote.  Writing is healing.