Filling the Blank Space

by Liz Flaherty

This is from the first year of the Window Holidays Project. In a way, it was the easiest year, because friends were eager to come, more people liked to write and read blogs, and it was all positive. In 2022, we needed positive, didn't we? We still do. But even then, there were times when it didn't work out and a friend or I filled in the blank space. Even though I've changed it a little, I'm covering over the space today. Thank you for stopping in.

I so love having guests every day through this season, and I'm grateful you've made them welcome. Isn't it fun reading their stories and connecting them to your own? I've been been both surprised and gratified by the reception the Window Holidays Project has received. 

There is, if I'm honest about it, a bittersweetness to our Christmases anymore. Although I celebrate the birth of Jesus, and that hasn't changed--although my gratitude has grown, which is a good thing--I miss the way Christmas Days were when our kids were little. I miss the family members who aren't with us anymore. 

I miss fullness.

It's been a rough several years for most of us, hasn't it? We've dealt with Covid, with political unrest, with finding and learning to live with new normals. This is my first Christmas without the sister who was part of every day of my life until the one in April when she left us. Her daughters and grandchildren are finding their way without her. So are my brother and I and the astonishing number of people whose lives she touched. 

And there it is. Not the fact that she's gone, but the lives she touched while she was here.

Loss is excruciating--a family at church and another family whose lives have touched ours are suffering that during these already emotion-packed days of the Christmas season. But before we lose, we have. Time may not heal wounds, because the scars are way too deep for that, but it gentles them. It gives us joy in memories. Laughter. Oh, yes, laughter.

But there are still blank spaces in our lives, aren't there? To deny them is to pretend they got there by some mean kind of magic and poof! they're gone. I was trying to think of a good way to put this, and I remembered what so many people said when Kurt Schindler passed away. "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good," from the musical, Wicked.

And there the fullness is. In the memories and the laughter and even the sadness of those losses and other things that happen to us to leave unfillable holes, there is the knowing we've been changed for the good.

This post is sort of...out there, hasn't it? But there's no more emotional time than this one. All of those who are dealing with loss, loneliness, or dark times, I wish you comfort and that joy and laughter will find you amid the grief. I wish you fullness. 

Another guest will be here tomorrow. Brightness will eventually come back into today's cold and cloudy skies. We will continue, through the "loss, loneliness, or dark times" to find the good. It's what we do always, but especially at this time of year.

Be nice to somebody.