Mountains Moved

It’s just about Thanksgiving again.  I can hardly believe as I watch the days pass on my calendar that we are once again nearing the end of the year and this year for us was so full of so many big and wonderful changes .  Generally I start to brace myself as I prepare for a minefield of memories but for some reason, this year, I’m just enjoying and looking forward to, and excited for the holiday season. For the first time in nine years I can't wait to go cut down my Christmas Tree and put up lights and play Christmas Music, I'm looking forward to the hope and magic that fills the spirit of the Christmas season.  Is this what healing is? Is that what grace is?  I’m not sure, but although those memories linger, there’s other memories I’ve been choosing lately instead.  

Memories of the way a community, my home, my family, came together giving us a magical Christmas when our world had fallen apart and we had nothing.  Coming home from a long heart breaking trip with children who couldn’t walk to a home lit up with Christmas magic in every corner, including a wheel chair ramp, constructed by the best of friends with love and a room set up to keep my children comfortable as they healed their physical wounds.  I choose to remember the lights twinkling from the tree and the trays of cookies and food strewn out on the counter and the pile of gifts left under our tree when Santa himself knocked on our door that Christmas Eve, red hat and boots and all. I choose to remember the love I was given and shown by a community unlike any other and somehow, the hurt got smaller over the years.  Choosing those memories instead and looking back, I can see how this year of growth and change for us, is attributed to those moments of love and magic we were blessed to encounter all those years ago in so many ways during some of the darkest moments.

I eventually had to make the decision to move on from that home, staying in touch intermittently with those amazing friends, but I am ashamed to say, no where near enough.  I started running figuratively and physically as far away from that pain as I could get, throwing myself into a new career and working as many hours as I could possibly fit into a day. I didn’t fit in that world I loved so much anymore.  I would stop back in occasionally  and see how all the children had grown while my friends and I remained as we were, but if I stayed too long, the pain and the heartbreak  of the life I lost would level me for days, so I set my eyes on the future and forged ahead.  But recently, I stopped back in and bracing for the days that left that bitter sweet nostalgia of a place I loved, I found instead a comfort of a family where I had always belonged, all the broken, damaged, whole, old, and new versions of me always fit just as I was and am.  Instead of being leveled for days, I felt a new excitement, my life had changed, I grew, and evolved and made new friends and learned new things but this place still welcomes me home as if nothing ever changed.  As I watched the bigger versions of my children play with the bigger versions of all their friends running a muck on bikes and skate boards well past sunset in the streets dotted with the flames of bonfires and porch lights and candles and glow sticks, I saw the perfect timing in this perfect world and the heartbreaks, those were the blessings and I am so grateful, I get to see it all come together in this beautiful way.

There’s been holidays in which I relied on food banks and the kindness of  friends and strangers alike to provide a festive holiday meal to my children.  But now, I am able to not only provide that to my children, but I am able to give away and hopefully give the gift of hope to others feeling so lost and broken that they can’t see anything else right now. I’m doing my best to involve my children in this giving so they can see, it doesn’t really take much to give hope and show love, the way we were given so much love and hope all those years ago.  And this is, I believe, how we will change the world.  

It is easy to see all the destruction, sadness, anger, hate, and all that is wrong, but something as simple as a smile, a hug, small words of encouragement, forgiveness, a few dollars to buy some extra food, or dropping off a coat you no longer need for someone you will never meet, is the love that I choose to remember and believe will change this world for the better one gesture at a time because that kind of love and hope moves mountains when you believe…. it moved unsurpassable mountains of limitations for me.

As we begin this holiday season and the hustle and bustle from shopping to parties to recitals to preparing meals and baking cookies and sending out cards, that we remember  that the greatest gifts will not be wrapped in bows or under our trees, but that we remember the greatest gifts we have to give and to receive cost very little and remain the same in the darkest and brightest moments of our lives, faith, hope, and love.

And to all the friends and family who remained through the years, thank you for inspiring me to be and do more and always having faith in me and helping me move mountains.