[quiet moments]

This has been a season of great loss for so many people...by God's amazing grace, my family is rejoicing this holiday season in knowing that we are blessed with so much.  But ~ I can only imagine that this year certainly hasn't ended how many people pictured it. 

My grandfather is rejoicing in heaven this Christmas...a friend won a long battle with cancer [in heaven]...a series of unexpected losses have brought friends, co-workers and acquaintances to the feet of Jesus.  No, none of how this year has ended the way many people expected it to...and yet God alone is Emmanuel, God with us. 

I have often wondered in the days before my papa's heaven-going...if after 65 years of marriage, he and my grandmother held each other in bed and spoke of what was to come.  If in the quiet moments they remembered loss and love.  victories and defeats.  joy and sorrow.  What did they whisper in those quiet moments?  It is well with my soul?  My heart hopes so. 

This season, my mind has often been drawn back to those questions....and other moments.  Two thousand years ago, in a corner of a lambing cave in Bethlehem...there were other moments.  Holy moments where a mother cradled her son, Emmanuel, with more love than we maybe could ever imagine.  In those quiet moments of great joy, I cannot help but wonder what Mary whispered to Jesus.  What loss and love mingled together.  victories and defeats.  joy and sorrow.  beauty and pain.  I don't know if any of the rest of Mary's life is what she expected.  Maybe it was.  Maybe it wasn't.  But she always had the quiet moments with the King of Kings. 

I pray earnestly that however my year ends...how your year ends...that our quiet moments with Emmanuel are vulnerable. real. beautiful. honest. painful. fruitful. hopeful.  He IS with us. 

*love*