The baby changed everything

This season is proving to be difficult.  Like a dark cloud wrapped in everyone around you telling you how hard it's going to be.  And it is, regardless of their foreshadowing.  

I had a moment in November where I wanted to stomp my feet and boycott Christmas.  I didn't want to decorate or bake or be excited.  Honestly, having a 7 year old is enough to force me to drag myself out of that funk.  But in the Lord's kindness, He spoke too.  Real quietly, He said "But that baby changed everything".  

I mean, think about it, it's kind of weird.  We believe God sent his Son, with skin on, and had him come through an actual mama and live on this earth.  We call it "God With Us".  Well, God called it that.  These thoughts almost stopped me in my tracks.  How did that baby change things?  My mind answered...God came to be with us.  Jesus didn't assign his little baby self Kingship--God did!  He came just as was promised much, much before and lived just like it said so that I could know Him!   So that my sin wouldn't separate me any longer--He came to live like a human and take that for me! It's nuts.  But it's true and changing.  Life changing.

And you know what?  That baby changed everything for me.  It changed the way I see death.  It changed the way I live.  Before I lost Scott.  And certainly now.  And the reality is it changed everything for Scott!  What a crazy disservice to my guy to ignore this giant season!  Scott lived and served and loved abundantly well because that baby changed everything for him! And as he slipped from this earth, I knew he was walking into new life because of what the baby grew up to do.  

Now, let me say, this doesn't make us less sad.  In fact, I seem to struggle more, not less.  My flesh is so sad.  My heart hurts and aches. But hope means something because of that baby!   Because I do not wish for this life to mean something eternal and not temporal--I wait for it.  I know it.  I wait expectantly for God to do what He said and promised.  Now and in the future.  Now--that He is with me and has a plan.  That He doesn't waste pain and that He loves me.  Later--that He is coming back and this life is but a mist.  

As I shop and remember and cry and rejoice this season--I literally think, sometimes outloud, "that baby changed everything".  And there is peace.