When I was a young adult, coming home for Christmas meant my parents’ house. That’s where Christmas was. That’s where it had to be, where it always had been. I got married and shortly after that we moved to Indiana. Those first couple of years, we came back home for Christmas…and it was still my parents’ house.
But a shift was coming. A new wind was blowing and I wasn’t ready for it. When I was pregnant with our second child, I had experienced a miscarriage and then a tubal pregnancy (requiring emergency surgery) between the two children. My doctor thought that it might not be a good idea to travel all day in a car in the middle of winter to get home for Christmas, especially since I was in the first trimester of the pregnancy.
Suddenly the song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was where I was living.
“I’ll be home for Christmas – you can plan on me.
Please bring snow and mistletoe, and presents by the tree.
Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams…
I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”
What had always been an unbearably sappy song became my theme song and I would sing it along with Amy Grant with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Did I mention that I was pregnant? That’s right – emotions on steroids. I couldn’t imagine a Christmas so far away from home.
It turned out that we didn’t go back to Minnesota for Christmas until we moved back here nearly 10 years later. I cried that first year, missing my parents, missing my siblings, missing our traditions, missing the cookies, missing the singing of Christmas carols, missing…everything. But God had set me in a new place, with a wonderful husband, a sweet little boy and another one on the way. We had to learn how to make our home the place where Christmas was.
And we did. We borrowed a lot of traditions from my growing up years and added our own. At some point I realized what a blessing it was to be able to stay home on Christmas Day, to enjoy the sweetness of celebrating our Lord’s birth with our growing family at home – our home. Out of death came life. Out of sorrow came joy. The uncomfortable thing became comfortable; what seemed out of place fell into place.
And now, we are the parents of adult children, some of whom are married and starting families. Our home can no longer be the center for them – they have started a new thing. It’s the way it should be. As long as they can come to our house for Christmas, I will rejoice and be thankful. But I don’t want to forget that God has put them in a new place with new beginnings, to start their own traditions, and to make their homes the place where Christmas is for their children.
To paraphrase what John the Baptist said, “They must increase and we must decrease.”
But I’ve also learned something else. Seeing them increase is a glorious thing, just as it was for John to see Jesus increase while he decreased. That’s what he was there for – to point the way to Jesus. And as parents, this is part of what we’re here for – to point the way for our children to live independent lives for His glory. And Lord willing, our children will be raising new little ones to follow Jesus. Hallelujah!
And decreasing – well, that’s not all a bad thing either. I love the full house at Christmas time, but boy is it nice to return to our regular quiet routine after all the celebrating is over and the guests are gone.
To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.
Amen and amen.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning. He must increase and my blog must decrease.
Lynniebeemuseoday 
🙂
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