Holidailies: Where are you Christmas?

Where are you Christmas?
Why can't I find you?
Why have you gone away?
Where is the laughter
You used to bring me?
Why can't I hear music play?

I hate to be a downer on the holidays; I'd like to be able to sing the carols and drink the eggnog because I feel it in my heart and not just go through the motions for the sake of the children. I have put up the lights, set up the Christmas village and decked the halls but I still dont feel it.

My world is changing
I'm rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too?

Instead, I have a decision that weighs on me like a stone that is holding me down. I feel like there is a proverbial shoe waiting to drop as people wait for whatever decision I make. Why I feel like it is my choice that everything hinges upon or why invariably someone will be upset and hurt by the choice I make, I dont know, It isnt a choice that is made lightly or without thought but everyone has an opinion and no matter what in this life, you cant please everyone.

Where are you Christmas
Do you remember
The one you used to know
I'm not the same one
See what the time's done
Is that why you have let me go

I want so badly to make the *right* choice--the one that will have my heart bursting into the Hallelujah chorus, replete with choirs of angels singing and so on--but instead I have quiet epiphanies in bustling grocery aisles. There is a voice inside me that says "I think it has to be like this" and I know that it is ringing true in my heart but I am a coward and I am afraid of the consequences of that choice.

When I gave the thought breath outside my own head last night, in the stillness of night where I could hide under cover of darkness, the reaction was as I feared and the silence was unending. And in the light of morning, the unsettled feeling has not dissipated and I am still afraid. Why does life have to be so hard?

I need to repeat to myself the fact that I am NOT walking away from my life. I am not making a selfish decision. I am not doing something with the purpose to harm someone else. but I am needing to make a decision that helps me to start living life again, rather than this farce that life has become. I am needing to find the spirit of Christmas that will speak to me once again of peace in my heart, of laughter in my life, of happy days and quiet nights.

Christmas is here
Everywhere, oh
Christmas is here
If you care, oh

If there is love in your heart and your mind
You will feel like Christmas all the time

I feel you Christmas
I know I've found you
You never fade away
The joy of Christmas
Stays here in silence
Fills each and every heart with love

Where are you Christmas
Fills your heart with love

And so it goes...