"The Weary World Rejoices"

My favorite Christmas song is “O Holy Night”. There’s one particular line in there that I find striking—“the weary world rejoices”. We’re there, or at least I am. I’m excited about Christmas; looking forward to celebrating, rejoicing, in Christ's birth, yet I’m weary. I have found myself using the term 'weary' on several occasions in the last week when describing myself to others. I’ve laid awake at night thinking about why I am so weary, and have come up with a few reasons. First of all, I’m one of those people that Greg Surratt preached about recently—this is the first Christmas “since”… I look back on this year, and honestly it’s been a good year overall. We were able to take an amazing vacation in September, and we’ve been blessed with great health just to name a couple. However, there have been 2 events that make this season a little hard for me (i.e. celebrating the first Christmas since…). The first is my grandmother passed away in May. I miss her dearly, even though I rejoice in knowing that she is in the presence of God constantly these days. The second is our recent miscarriage. I was hoping that I would be celebrating my 14th week on Christmas day, but have realized God has other plans for us and a family. I’ve come to terms with the loss, realizing that it wasn’t meant to be and that God is ultimately in control (which is a good thing—and was definitely a good thing in our situation). We’re still sad, though, and there are days and moments where Christmas songs will bring tears to my eyes.
I’ve also been weary because of work. I feel overloaded, tired, and have come to realize that I just can’t please everyone. There have been many days over the last couple of weeks where I wanted to walk in and hand my supervisor my resignation. I was actually pretty close a couple of days. I am very blessed to work for a Christian, so I was able to meet with him on Thursday and we were able to map out a plan to help with the “overloading”. Oh, and add in the country’s economic crisis and state budget cuts and it really gets depressing. I am blessed that my department is not faced with any furloughs right now; however, that could all change next year. I am very much looking forward to my upcoming Christmas break.
As I was thinking about writing this blog, I listened to the song “O Holy Night”. I found hope in many of the lines of the song—all of which can be backed up by scripture. I’m too lazy to correlate these lines to scripture, but these are the lines that give me hope: “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”, “The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friend.”, “He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger”, and “Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace.” I will be the first to admit that I have not done my part in praying over the last few weeks. It has not been easy. Part of it is my being lazy, and part is that I find it difficult to talk to God during this time. I never thought it would be hard to talk to God; for some reason it is. Yet, I know that He is faithful and still loves me. In fact, thinking about the poem “Footprints”, this is probably a time when there is only one set of footprints in the sand as God has been carrying me for the last 5 or 6 weeks. Thankfully He is God and strong enough to carry me.
So, there’s where I am--weary, yet looking forward to Christmas with anticipation. God is alive—He loves us! And believe it or not, David and I have done some really fun things over the last couple of weeks (and have had a blast). We went to the James Island County Park Festival of lights, we went to the Seacoast Christmas concert (which is incredible!!), we’ve enjoyed Brookgreen’s Night of a Thousand Candles with both sets of parents, and we ordered our very own copy of “A Christmas Story” and had a blast watching that! We had a great time at our small group Christmas party on Friday night, we enjoyed David’s work party last night (my work party was scrapped this year due to the financial crisis/state budget cuts), and today we went biking in the Francis Marion National Forest.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though I am weary, we are very blessed. God loves us. My New Year’s resolution will be to talk to God more often. He’s an interesting fellow, and wants to spend time with me. He can even help me get through my weariness. As far as hoping, we’re hoping that 2009 He will continue to bless us, even though we don’t deserve it.
Below are some pictures from our house.