Relieved it’s over

I have never been more relieved for a season to be over than I am for Thanksgiving and Christmas to finally be through. The last two months have felt like a slow steady torture to my heart and soul. The mental and spiritual battle has been exhausting as I wrestled with hating a day but loving so deeply the reason for it..I continued to battle my feelings of devastation by thinking about how thankful I am for Jesus, his birth and the sacrifice he made for me..Unfortunately as I was forced to go out and participate in buying presents..I didn’t feel the love of God around me..I felt the commercialization and excessive buying..the feeling of ppl buying happiness instead of giving gifts that are filled with personal meaning and thought..this only magnified the emptiness and lost feelings I was wanting so badly to avoid as my happiness can’t be found in something bought but instead in the love and memories I’ve made..Thoughts constantly running through my mind about how much would be missing from our tree and the inability to fill it..Wanting desperately to find the joy everyone is praying for us to find but understanding that is not where God has me right now..I’m not throwing a pity party Im not dwelling on her loss..I’m missing her..who she was and the sheer enjoyment she brought to our lives..I noticed Cameron was also looking for her and for a way to include her..it was his idea to take pictures with her cross..Stacy had put all his gifts together but noticed two were missing..one a bible similar to Sydney’s I later found beside his bed and the other a personalized soccer ball he carried around with him that says “PlayForJeter”❤️It does make me feel a little joy knowing that he too finds his happiness in gifts that were not the most expensive by monetary means but priceless to him because of the love and meaning attached. So I’m relieved to no longer struggle with wrestling spiritually with the over overindulgence of Christmas surrounding me and constantly feeling pressure to find joy in something that makes me feel so awful.