Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Redefining the Holidays

And now we are entering a treacherous part of the journey. Thursday will bring the first major holiday since Nancy went home. During the next few weeks we will be working at redefining the meaning of the word "holiday," even as the word "family" is reconfigured. We are trying to give new meanings to both those words, without the visible presence of the woman whose hospitality and warmth gave so much content to both terms.

Pray for us to keep moving toward one another, support one another and love one another, even as life itself is redefined.

2 comments:

Cindy Nore said...

Hi Dan. I wanted to thank you for sharing about griefshare.com in one of your blogs. I have since signed up for the daily emails, and they have been enormously helpful in just the short time I have been receiving them. I followed a number of links on the website that led me to a series of articles about coping with the holidays. One of the articles talked about how extremely difficult the time is between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, and I thought your description of entering "treacherous" times was the perfect word for how these next few weeks will feel for you, for me, and for so many others facing the first holiday season without a loved one here. My prayers are with your family as you seek to redefine the holiday season with the love, support, and connection to one another that you are preparing to utilize to get through these rough days. God bless - Cindy

domandkat said...

Hey,

Treacherous is a good word. When my dad died, that Christmas my mom and sister had the worst fight I've ever seen them have. When Mom died I just didn't really want to celebrate. Knowing that wasn't realistic (maybe I took Grisham's Skipping Christmas to heart), we ended up deliberately changing a few things - like the food. We didn't eat much of the normal stuff we eat for Christmas dinner. Now we are back to the normal stuff, but intentionally doing something different because life is now different was somehow good for us...
I don't think I'll ever try to make a crown roast again :-)