Christmas is my favorite time of year. I’ve been longing for this season for months. The friends and family, the holly and jolly, the baking and singing, the cold and snuggly, the hope and magic. And it’s finally here!!
Today is first day of Advent.
Advent is the season we celebrate and anticipate the coming of Christ. It’s a season of longing for the BEST that is yet to come. It’s a time when hope abounds and we trust that the troubles of this world will be fleeting. All because a baby was born to a first time mom.
Today is also the beginning of our foster son’s first Christmas season in our home.
This is our first Christmas season with a kid in the house – the first time we get to experience the magic of seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child.
We helped him write a letter to Santa. We watched his eyes sparkle when we pulled out all the Christmas decorations (and oh boy do we have a ton!). We’re already tired of singing Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Today we also started a new family Advent tradition of unwrapping a Christmas book each day until Christmas! I had so much fun finding all these books and look forward to wrapping them up and reading them again every year.
And today is also the two year anniversary of Morgan’s death.
Which means it’s been two years since I cradled my baby’s tiny, lifeless body against my chest as I rubbed my face on his velvety soft hair, breathing in the scent of him one last time.
I hate being constantly stuck between joy and grief. Love and pain. Life and death.
And yet this is the reality of losing a child. Life is evermore full of two emotions at once, especially around the holidays. I’m glad for Morgan’s existence and crushed at his absence. I’m excited for making Christmas memories with my foster son, and keenly aware that Morgan should be there by his side.
Everything is sacred and tainted simultaneously.
This duality of emotions is something very familiar to the bereved. But familiarity doesn’t equal ease. Even time does not equal ease. It’s hard to sit in a mixture of conflicting emotions. It’s not something that can be acclimated to. No one just suddenly becomes immune to the pain, because to feel no loss would be to deny the love associated with it.
I can no more “get over” the loss of Morgan than I can go on living without breathing. He’s a part of me – and I know every parent out there understands that supernatural intertwining of hearts. A literal piece of mine is now gone. And that will never be comfortable. I will always feel that hole.
So I sit here tonight, staring at my Christmas tree with 23 books left under it, feeling every happy and sad emotion there is. Because my heart is bursting for two little boys – the one sleeping soundly in my home, and the one who isn’t.
I’m so very thankful that I know Morgan is with Jesus. I don’t have to wonder where he is or if I’ll see him again. It’s just a constant season of longing between here and there.
