Recently, something happened in my little corner of the world that made me pause and look a little more closely at the way we interact with each other.
It was a simple moment that should have passed quickly. The sort of ordinary, everyday situation that, in another time, might have led to a brief conversation between neighbors and then quietly faded into the background of life. Instead, it unfolded online. And watching the reaction to it got me thinking about something that has become increasingly difficult to ignore.
More and more, people seem to be living their lives as if the internet is the primary place where reality happens. Not the grocery store. Not the sidewalk. Not even a quick conversation at the post office.
The internet…
This mentality shows up in the way people speak to each other online with a level of certainty and intensity that rarely appears in face-to-face conversations. A simple concern becomes a debate. A disagreement becomes a spectacle. And before long, the entire discussion begins to feel less like neighbors talking and more like strangers arguing in a comment section.
What struck me most about the situation that sparked these thoughts wasn't the original event itself, but the responses that followed.
Some people dismissed, even belittled, the concern entirely. Others reacted with extreme outrage. What seemed to disappear almost immediately was the quiet middle ground where most reasonable adults usually live. The place where someone pauses, considers the situation, and responds with a bit of balance.
It’s interesting how the internet has a way of pulling people away from that middle ground.
Part of the problem is that the internet rewards the loudest voices. Calm observations rarely travel far. Nuance doesn't generate attention. Dramatic reactions spread quickly and attract the most interaction. Before long, people begin speaking in ways that feel better suited to performance than to actual conversation.
It creates an environment where ordinary issues suddenly feel larger and harsher than they really are.
The strange thing is that many of the people participating in these conversations aren't strangers. They are neighbors. They are people who see around town every day.
Yet something about the screen in front of us makes it easy to forget that.
When conversations happen online, restraint often disappears. Words are typed quickly. Assumptions are made. Humor becomes sharper than intended. Sometimes people say things they would never dream of saying if the same discussion were happening face to face.
​It is one of the subtle side effects of becoming chronically online.
The longer we live inside digital spaces, the easier it becomes to adopt the habits of these spaces. And slowly, almost without noticing it, we begin to see the cost of living online. Conversations become more reactive. Opinions become more absolute. Gradually, the tone of the internet begins to shape the tone of our communities.
What worries me isn't that people disagree. Disagreement has always existed and always will.
What worries me is how easily we forget that there are real people on the other side of the screen. Real neighbors. Real families. Real communities that still have to share the same physical space long after the comment thread disappears.
Not long after the online debate that started me thinking about this, something much more serious happened in town. The kind of thing that reminds everyone, very quickly, that life outside the internet is still very real and often far more complicated than a comment section suggests.
Moments like that have a way of resetting perspective.
They remind us that communities aren't built in online arguments. They are built in everyday awareness of the people around us. In small acts of responsibility and compassion. In remembering that our words and actions ripple outward in ways we may never fully see.
The internet can be a useful tool. It can connect people and share information quickly. But it can also create the strange illusion that the normal rules of society and common courtesy no longer apply.
Maybe the quiet challenge in front of all of us is this.
Remember that life is still happening beyond the screen. And that the people reading our words online are the same people we pass around town every day.

Everyone has an opinion about something. If you don’t believe me… hop over to Facebook or TikTok and you’ll see that firsthand while picking up a little trauma along the way.
As someone who loves reading and cinema, I have my fair share of opinions on both. And due to a DELIGHTFUL migraine, I’m keeping things shorter and more playful this week. So today, I’m sharing a few of my “unpopular” book and movie opinions.
Disclaimer… no feelings were hurt in the making of this blog post.

 HATE the book 1984.
I understand that it’s wildly relevant to the world we live in, but oh my gosh. I hated reading it in high school. I am permanently traumatized by the ancient prostitute the main character goes to visit. And the worst part? I reference this book almost every year in my welcome-back-to-school staff introduction, calling myself “Big Brother.” The irony is not lost on me.

​Romantasy is overhyped… AND unfairly dismissed. Let me explain.
I LOVE romantasy. It’s dominating publishing sales and is one of the fastest-growing fiction categories right now. I’ve read some incredibly immersive series: Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses, Fourth Wing, Quicksilver… the list goes on.
But from the “serious literature” crowd, I often get the sense that romantasy is dismissed as nothing more than fairy smut. And don’t get me wrong… yes. There is a lot of that.
Then you have cleaner, beautifully written series like Snow Like Ashes, An Ember in the Ashes, The Kiss of Deception, Once Upon a Broken Heart. Because of the mass flooding of fairy smut into the genre, these genuinely well-written romantasies get overlooked. That doesn’t make them any less great.
This is also what I mean by overhyped. When a genre explodes, not everything in it is excellent. Looking back at some of my initial reviews, for example Quicksilver, I didn’t love the writing style, the character arcs, or the development. It felt like the love child of several other popular series. Just because something is trending doesn’t automatically make it strong.

Which leads me to my next “unpopular opinion”…
Spicy content is overused.
Spice has become so common that it almost feels obligatory. And that’s where I struggle. When an author isn’t sure how to move a scene forward or add dimension to a relationship, spice starts to feel like filler instead of substance. I love Feyre and Rhysand, but there were times when I felt certain scenes pulled away from their development instead of strengthening it. A good story shouldn’t need that kind of patchwork.

​And this one gets me…
SHADOW DADDIES ARE COPY-PASTE.
I loved Rhysand, the original shadow daddy. Then I found Xaden, whom I also love, but who felt familiar. Then Kingfisher. Everywhere I turn in romantasy, there’s another brooding, morally gray, shadow-wielding male lead who feels like someone cloned Rhysand and tweaked a detail or two.
I think this ties into something bigger. Morally gray characters are wildly popular right now. Heroes who are upright, steady, and morally sound don’t get the same cultural love. That feels societal to me. But it’s okay to have a morally upright character. I wish we saw more of them.

​I’ll start gently.
I HATE Pretty Woman.
I don’t find it romantic. I think it romanticizes a very toxic relationship. I love Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, but I much prefer them in Runaway Bride. In Pretty Woman, he doesn’t really grow so much as he adjusts just enough to keep her from walking away. That doesn’t feel like transformation to me. I would rather watch its predecessor, My Fair Lady, every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

​Another overrated movie? Titanic.
When I saw it as a kid, I was fascinated, but mostly by the historical event itself. As I got older and learned more about the actual tragedy, I realized the movie feels more sensationalized than necessary.
And as a completely separate and unnecessary side note… learning about Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating life did not exactly help the rewatch experience.
And I don’t care what you say. “Draw me like one of your French girls” was completely unnecessary. They just needed another wow factor.
Side side note. I do love Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s friendship over the decades. That part is elite.

​I know a number of people who love The Office, specifically the American version. Before I say this, I want to reestablish that I love you.
But I hate The Office.
I didn’t watch it when it originally aired. As an adult, I tried. I really tried. I just can’t get into it. I love dry humor, but I didn’t find most of the jokes funny. I think I struggle most with the shaky, hand-cam filming style. The documentary-style interviews have been done brilliantly elsewhere. But I think because I didn’t connect with the characters, the format didn’t add anything for me.

​At the end of the day, these opinions live in two fields that are deeply personal and subjective. Even the ones I feel strongly about aren’t hills I’m willing to die on.
But in a world constantly shouting about heavier “unpopular opinions,” I think it’s refreshing to disagree about books and movies instead.
Sometimes the lighter debates make for the best conversations.

It’s hard to ignore how many quiet battles are being fought behind ordinary smiles. I’ve watched people I love walk through things they never would have chosen. Burnout that makes getting out of bed feel heavier than it should, or test results that change the tone of a household. Bills that don’t shrink no matter how careful you are. The slow grief of watching someone’s body betray them, or the helplessness of loving someone you can’t fix. Sometimes it feels like everything is pressing in at once, trying to smother peace.
Growing up with a disability, I struggled with the why of my situation. Why did I have my disability? Why couldn’t I be a normal kid and do normal things with my friends? Why did I have limitations? Why did I have to grow up faster than my peers? Why why why…
It wasn’t until after I graduated high school that a thought occurred to me. I was retelling a story of an unpleasant experience I’d had in school when I made the observation that “If I hadn’t had my disability, I would have straight-up punched them in the face.” My mom looked at me, trying to see if I was joking. I wasn’t. I told her, “If it wasn’t for my disability, I would have been impossible.”
My disability required me to do a few things. It forced me to accept limits early in my life. It made me negotiate with my own body. And it quickly stole the illusions of invincibility. While kids my age were reaching that “rite of passage” where they got to “act first, think later”, I was stuck thinking through every decision I made before I made it. For a number of years, I resented my friends who had that privilege and didn’t appreciate it. Because while they got to believe they could power through anything and everything, I had to learn to work within reality’s confines.
As I began to look at life through the lens of my disability I started to see characteristics that I had to learn. While peers were forcing challenges aside, I was having to be patient until the problem went away or I could find another solution. While peers could flit from one thing to another to another, I had to weigh and measure my limited energy level while simultaneously learning that resting to reenergize wasn’t laziness, it’s self-care. While peers could deal with the physical consequences of forcing a situation, I was learning that control is usually a story we invent. While peers were able to bounce back from mishaps and stupid accidents, I was busy learning that not all pain is fixable, some of it gets carried through life. I don’t regret those lessons… now. Some of these lessons come with age. I had the privilege of learning them early, before they altered my life irrevocably.
At the core of my disability, I’ve learned that there are so many things I will never have control of and I need to accept that. Speaking of things I will never have control of? My body is at the top of that list. It has boundaries, and where some may be able to ignore it or push those boundaries back another day, I have to listen to them. No matter how inconvenient it may be. Sometimes that looks like adjustments, sometimes it looks like rescheduling or cancelling. But most importantly, my disability has taught me that time matters. Whether it’s making the most of “good days” when I get them, or restocking my energy reserves when I have to, time doesn’t stop for me. So I need to use it wisely, especially if I don’t want to always feel like I’m falling behind the rest of the world.
I’d love to say that I learned how to handle all of these life lessons on my own but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was blessed enough to be raised in a family that gave me a firm foundation built on faith. Without that faith, my disability would have felt like a pointless, sadistic twist of fate. While some may think that faith is a crutch, or that it makes all your problems disappear, I came to learn that it simply gave suffering context. Accepting that I am not in control of everything became infinitely easier when I stopped believing I had to be. While my disability taught me limits, my faith taught me trust.
Maybe that’s why when I see people around me wrestling with what they can’t change, something inside me breaks a little. I hope they come to see that limits don’t mean they’ve been abandoned. That suffering doesn’t mean they’re alone. My disability didn’t make me strong. It made me dependent, and in that dependence, I found something steadier than control.

​There are periods in our lives that don’t need solutions or speeches. They simply need a place where the weight can rest before you pick it back up and carry on. For me, one of those places has become writing.
Even growing up, I felt more comfortable putting my thoughts into words on a page than trying to say them out loud. I remember one time in high school when a friend wanted me to go see a movie in the theater with them. It was in a franchise I hadn’t been allowed to watch growing up. They were really excited, and I wanted to do something fun with my friend, so I asked my parents. I could tell they weren’t keen on it, but as a teenager wanting to fit in, I didn’t think too much about that. They told me I was old enough to make my own decision. They didn’t explicitly say yes or no, but I could tell.
We decided to go.
That night, though, I struggled to put into words how I felt about potentially disappointing them. So I wrote them a letter. I explained that I didn’t need to go, that I didn’t want to disappoint them, and that if they truly didn’t want me to see it, I wouldn’t. Long story short, I didn’t end up going. Years later, I found that letter tucked away in my mom’s things while we were moving.
There’s something about stress that seems to quiet the noise in my head just enough for me to write. When the words stop racing and I can place them onto a page or a screen, they become more manageable. I can slow moments down, revisit details I missed, and dig deeper into how something actually made me feel. From there, it feels easier to express those feelings to others, once they’ve been sorted through first.
Writing brings me a great deal of relief, but it doesn’t always solve the problems I’m facing. What it does do is keep those thoughts from festering or calcifying. It gives them somewhere to go. Whether I’m recording my thoughts in a journal, bringing experiences to life on my blog in hopes someone else might relate, or writing fantastical scenes for a story that may never see the light of day, the act itself matters. Writing lets me work through things without the added stress that often comes with talking.
I don’t think I’m a terrible conversationalist, though that could just be delusion speaking, but there’s so much more pressure in spoken conversation. Tone matters. Timing matters. There’s always the risk of saying something wrong or having something taken the wrong way, without the forgiveness of a backspace. Writing, on the other hand, is patient. It doesn’t interrupt or reinterpret. It simply absorbs without asking for immediate clarity.
As the weight of the day slowly transfers onto the blank page, the relief is temporary, but real. My mind settles. I feel myself soften instead of harden. Writing helps me remember who I am, even when things feel like they’re coming at me from all directions.
I know not everyone writes, but everyone needs a place where they can unload after long days. For some, that might be reading, music, crocheting, gardening, or cooking. The possibilities are endless, and sometimes they change from day to day. What matters is having somewhere to set the weight down, even if only for a little while.

This week, I had a conversation with a friend that stuck with me. Not because it was particularly dramatic, but because it highlighted something subtle and surprisingly prevalent in how we move through the world right now. At first, we didn’t name the issue we were circling. We compared various moments where people with less experience, understanding, or relationship tried to correct us or diminish us. As we compared notes, a common thread began to emerge.
Not a generational one, but a relational one.
Entitlement, as I’ve come to understand it, doesn’t seem tied to age. At least not in the way it’s usually framed. It shows up more as a mindset. A way someone orients themselves in the world. And more than anything, as a manners issue.
Somewhere along the way, the idea of respect became muddled. There’s basic human dignity, which should be given freely. No one earns the right to be treated as a person. That should be a given. But there’s another kind of respect too. The kind that grows slowly. Through consistency, listening, and showing up. Through accountability, over time.
That second kind isn’t automatic. And most importantly, it isn’t guaranteed.
Lately, it feels like we’ve begun treating all respect as owed by default, without making room for context. As if every voice carries the same weight in every situation, regardless of experience, responsibility, or consequence. As if feeling strongly about something is the same as understanding it deeply.
That shift shows up in small ways. In how we speak to one another. In how quickly we center our own comfort. In how easily we ask others to adjust themselves so we don’t have to sit with discomfort, urgency, or inconvenience.
This is where manners come in. The quiet kind, rooted in awareness. Awareness of the fact that you aren’t the only person in the room. Awareness that pauses before making a demand. Awareness that shared spaces, shared systems, and shared moments require a little restraint to function well.
Manners are what smooth the edges of community life. Especially when things are tense.
Entitlement skips that pause. It narrows the focus until the world revolves around the self. My feelings. My comfort. My interpretation. My timeline. When that happens, everything else becomes secondary. Context. History. Experience. Even responsibility.
My unease with entitlement isn’t about silencing younger voices. Many of them are sharp, thoughtful, and deeply perceptive.
But naming something isn’t the same as knowing how to move through it. Experience adds texture. It builds pattern recognition. A sense of how quickly things can unravel, how high the stakes can climb, and how much care certain moments require.
Time doesn’t make someone better by default. But it does change how you assess risk. How you carry responsibility. How you understand the weight of certain moments. And the dynamics you hold with certain people.
As this idea of entitlement lingered with me this week, I found myself turning inward. Thinking about ways I can ensure my own potentially entitled tendencies don’t rise to the surface. That’s what led me to stewardship. To caring for things because they’re fragile, not because they’re replaceable. Books, technology, relationships, communities, even words. Stewardship assumes limits. Entitlement assumes abundance. One asks, What will this cost? While the other asks, Why not me?
I don’t have a neat conclusion for this. No clear solution to offer. Just a quiet resolve.
I want to move through the world with a little more awareness of the space I share with others. To pause more often. To pay attention to what a moment actually requires, rather than what feels easiest in it.
Not because I expect anything in return. But because I’ve seen how much care matters when things are tense, and how easily it’s lost when everyone is reaching for the center.

I started off the year stating that I wanted to romanticize my life intentionally. Almost immediately, the reality of another new year settled in, and I felt weighed down by it. As I’ve spent the last few blogs brainstorming topics and ideas, I’ve worked hard not to make those weights the center of my posts. While I love having an introspective space where people can hopefully feel seen and relate, I already spend so much time carrying those thoughts that I simply don’t want to live inside them here. At the same time, I don’t want to pretend that life is all rainbows and unicorns either.
As I took notes, wrote out half-thoughts, and quietly argued with myself, it occurred to me that I had a fairly fatal flaw in my thinking. Not talking about the troubles in my life isn’t avoidance. It’s setting a boundary with myself. And romanticizing my life isn’t pretending everything is perfect. It’s choosing to focus on the wonder of things.
To me, one of the most romantic things in the world is a love letter. I blame Jane Austen for this. Across her novels, she uses letters again and again, often at the most pivotal moments, especially when her male characters can no longer say what needs to be said out loud. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy writes to Elizabeth after she rejects him, not to persuade her, but to take responsibility and explain himself. In Persuasion, Captain Wentworth writes to Anne when he realizes he can no longer remain silent out of fear of rejection.
I think the thing I love most about letters is that they carry the weight of love, remorse, reflection, forgiveness, devotion, gratitude, friendship, to name a few, in a gentle and meaningful way. So that’s what I want this blog to be. A small collection of love letters to a few of the things that add a little wonder to my life.

The pressure of a new year is everywhere. I scroll through Instagram and see endless lists of resolutions. Start a new diet. Start working out. Quit smoking. Reinvent yourself. The pressure to overhaul everything in January can be overwhelming, to say the least. It’s made me grateful that I chose a different approach this year. Instead of resolutions, I settled on a word, or in this year’s case, words, that I want to shape how I move through the months ahead. (If you want to read more about that, I shared it in last week’s post here: Romanticizing Life, Intentionally.) 2026 isn’t going to be about a dramatic reset for me. It’s about something quieter and kinder. Something I can actually live inside of. The first thing I did this year was turn my planner into a cozy place. A place I want to look at. A place where I want to document my days. After that, I created a loose time block for each day of the week. This is my first week trying that rotation, but the goal was never rigid structure. I wanted a schedule that gave me wiggle room, one that would be forgiving on days when my energy runs low, while still making space for things I’ve allowed to slip to the back burner. Reading. Writing. Gaming. Playing music. Working out. These are all things I’ve regrettably negotiated away over time. I realized I had been treating them like extras, when in reality they’re pieces of myself I’ve been compromising for the sake of productivity and obligation. Seeing them written into my days felt less like indulgence and more like honesty. Keeping my planner aesthetic and journal-like has been one small way I’ve been romanticizing my life lately. Waking up earlier on workdays to enjoy a cup of coffee is another. I may not be the world’s biggest coffee connoisseur, but there’s something nostalgic about it. Something grounding. And then there’s probably the silliest thing I’ve done. When I write, whether it’s for my book, my blog, or just practice, I use a keyboard I bought last year that looks and sounds a typewriter. It’s loud and clunky, but something about it makes me feel more present. The older style tricks my brain into taking my writing more seriously, as if I’ve stepped into a time when words were slower and mattered more. Add a wax burner and nostalgic music in the background. Whatever the setup looks like, I’m practicing slowing down and setting the mood. Romanticizing my life this year hasn’t been just about adding more joyful things to my plate. It’s been about noticing more. Especially the small things I would have rushed past before. As I work to balance joy and responsibility this year, I’m also learning to give myself grace. The schedules I’ve made have pockets of space built into them, room to shift things around when I need to. I’ve intentionally overlapped activities throughout the week so that if I miss something, which happens between life and living with a chronic illness, I don’t have to carry guilt until the next week rolls around. I know this is something I’ll continue to struggle with as the year goes on, but I’m trying to front-load myself with grace before I need it. The point is to let my routine guide my days, not govern them. Some days the list gets done. Some days it doesn’t. I’m learning that neither defines my worth. This intentional slowing hasn’t just changed how I structure my time. It’s changed how I show up for the people around me. While my sister and niece have moved out, leaving just me and my parents again, I’m making a conscious effort to enjoy our time together. One way we’ve been doing that is through our tiny homestead. Mostly my mom and I, with my dad’s occasional input, have been making plans. Mapping out the garden. Talking through how we want to offer farm-fresh produce. Figuring out how to be more present in that part of our lives. It’s been fun and exciting and a learning process all at once. It’s reminded me that I actually enjoy a challenge, especially one I’ve chosen for myself. It’s been a quiet adventure so far. Choosing to slow down. Choosing intention. Choosing to notice the little things that fill my cup.

I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. They put too much pressure on me to reach a certain goal, and when I stumble along the way, I end up feeling worse about myself than I would have if I’d never started at all. Instead, I’ve taken to choosing a word that I want to apply to different aspects of my life. This, however, is the first year I’m torn between two words: intention and romanticize. Let me explain.
“Intention” feels fairly self-explanatory. Going into 2026, I want to move through my days more deliberately. I don’t want to rush from one obligation to the next or say yes simply because it feels easier than saying no. I want to choose how I spend my time, my energy, and my attention with care. I started practicing that in small ways in 2025, and I’ve seen how much steadier life feels when I slow down enough to decide what actually matters.
“Romanticize,” on the other hand, feels like it needs a little more explanation. I stumbled across this idea a few years ago on Instagram, first in the homestead world and then in the book world. It doesn’t really have anything to do with romance or relationships. Instead, it’s the act of purposefully doing things in a way that makes you fall in love with your life, or at least one small piece of it at a time. When I think about romanticizing my life, I think of Audrey Hepburn. Slowing things down. Learning something just because it brings joy. Almost like you’re trying to woo yourself.
As I went back and forth between which of these words I wanted to be my “word of the year,” I struggled at first because they felt counterintuitive. Romanticizing your life feels light, almost indulgent. It’s about leaning into what feels good, following joy without needing to justify it. Intention, on the other hand, feels weightier. Purposeful. Rooted in choice and discipline. One seemed to whisper, do this because it makes you happy, while the other seemed to caution, don’t do something just because… make sure it matters. I couldn’t figure out how both could exist in the same space without canceling each other out.
Somewhere in the middle of this small, definitional dispute with myself, it dawned on me. Doing something just because it brings me joy doesn’t make it meaningless. In fact, enjoying my life, enjoying what I do and who I am, makes everything else easier to do with intention.
I want to intentionally set aside time and activities that make me love my life. There are plenty of things already weighing on me as I step into a new year, but I don’t want those things to outweigh the good ones I so often miss.
Maybe this year doesn’t need a single word at all. Maybe it needs a balance. Intention without rigidity. Joy without guilt. A slower way of living that allows meaning to grow naturally instead of being forced. If I’m honest, that feels like the truest way I know how to step into a new year.

It’s that time of year again. I’m sitting in my cozy house, listening to Christmas music and watching Hallmark movies. A warm cup of tea is never far from me, with delicious cookies at my beck and call that I’ll probably regret next month.
Christmas has always held a special place in my heart. As a child, I loved the presents and the lights. My family went all out. We would take the day after Thanksgiving to decorate our house and often my grandparents’ house as well, covering everything in lights and festive displays. Christmas carols by Elvis, Patsy and Elmo, Reba, and Burl Ives played as we hung bright, twinkling things around our home.
As a teenager and young adult, I craved that time with my family, especially my grandparents. Every year on Christmas Eve, after we’d finished our huge Christmas feast, we would sit down with our slices of pie and watch Home Alone or rather, we would watch my grandpa watch Home Alone. Every year without fail, he made the same comments at the same moments. Each trap Kevin set earned a heartfelt, “Oh man, that REALLY had to hurt,” each one worse than the last. It was like watching my grandpa transform into a young boy all over again, every single year.
At least once during our festivities, my grandma would sit down at my piano. With or without a music book in front of her, she would play beautiful hymns and carols. Always quietly, as if she simply wanted the music to fill the spaces between conversation. If she ever made a mistake or forgot a note, you couldn’t tell. It wasn’t meant to be a performance. It was a constant presence, gentle and grounding, never overwhelming.
​My mom was always at the heart of it all. The kitchen came alive under her hands as she prepared beautiful spreads of food, each dish arranged with care, never rushed, always thoughtful. It wasn’t just about feeding people. It was an act of love, of service, of making sure everyone felt welcomed and cared for. Her quiet devotion set the tone for the entire day, a living reminder that Christmas is meant to be an offering of ourselves to others, not just for one day, but for the whole season.
My dad, meanwhile, was rarely still. He bustled in and out, fixing, adjusting, hanging lights, making sure the outside of our home felt just as warm and inviting as the inside. He greeted neighbors with a wave, a joke, a smile that came easily and honestly. His cheerfulness and steady kindness reflected something deeper. That how we show up to the world matters. That joy, generosity, and welcome shouldn’t be seasonal decorations, but year-round practices.
As an adult, I miss the calming reassurance of so many of those moments. The smiles and laughter. My grandparents’ laughter and hugs. They were so ingrained in this holiday that without them, it feels like a different event altogether. And then I remember.
They both knew what this holiday was really about. At the core of the movies, the music, and the presents, I was always reminded that this holiday is a Holy-day. We celebrate it because God came to earth in the form of a baby, the most vulnerable form, to die for each and every one of us. That the God of the universe, the Creator of all, loved us so infinitely that He chose to come down, suffer alongside us, be beaten, ridiculed, and killed so that we would have the chance to spend eternity with Him.
He didn’t have to do that. We chose to separate ourselves from Him. We chose to sin. We choose, again and again, to push Him aside. And still, He chose to endure the pain and suffering before Him so that we, too, would have the chance to choose Him for eternity.
It’s because my grandparents knew and trusted in that truth that I know I’ll get to spend Christmas with them again. And next time, it won’t be for a season.
Next time, it will be for eternity.