Countdown to Christmas 2024…Day 22
It is the fourth Sunday of Advent.
I am sitting under the red plaid blanket that was draped over the living room chair I claim as “mine.” On the one that belongs to my better half is another festive blanket, a heating pad and a massage pad purchased for him years ago by our son. A testimony of some aches in his back and hips that we are trying to overcome.
Last night we went to church, a tad weary, so we can head up this morning and hang with one of the grands who is under the weather while the rest of the clan heads to their church. Before and after the service, we held and wept with some people grieving heavy losses this year.
Yesterday at the store, I worked side by side with my friend Kim, the owner. We marveled that what we thought was going to be the beginning of the end of her store is now the beginning of a new beginning.
We listened to several customers tell us about their “Tournesol” house, how they are so thankful the store will carry on with Kim’s daughter at the helm. They shared how much the store has meant to them over the years.
We helped one precious woman who we have watched progress through a viscous disease purchase gifts for granddaughters. She struggles and yet carries on with such grace and determination. We are her friends, she told us.
Others have had tragic losses of spouses, and we stood weeping with them even as we shared smiles of how good God has been in the process. Another shared of a father with Alzheimers and I recounted my own walk through that horrible disease. He died on this day in 2010 to join my mom in heaven on what would have been their 68th anniversary.
The next few days will be filled with gathering ingredients, preparing the menu I have jotted on a piece of notebook paper and deciding just how clean will be clean enough for the time we have with our kin that will be in attendance. Our John will be with friends in Texas and we will miss him.
In the midst of it all, I will be thinking of our friend as he held my hand last night while I held his wife with my other arm. I will see their faces etched deep with grief and hear him ask me how people do this without God. I will remember answering what I always answer when people ask me this.
I don’t know.
He is Emmanuel.
God with us.
He was in every conversation I was involved in yesterday, in every tear and every burst of laughter.
He is present in us and through us and, I have to believe, He is still with us in spite of us forgetting Him at times.
Wonderful Counselor
Mighty God
Everlasting Father
Prince of Peace
Emmanuel
God. With. Us.
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