Christmas without Roderick, or Not?

  “Are you doing anything special for Roderick this Christmas?”  The Hairdresser asked me today.

   “I don’t know,” I answered “I’ve been thinking about it but would there be anything wrong with just not doing anything?  Doing something just brings to much pain”.

   “There’s no right or wrong,” she said “but you could do something as simple as giving a donation in Roderick’s honour”.

   Then she proceeded to tell me how they had gone to scatter her brother-in-law’s ashes and her brother had asked her sister and nephew if they wanted to go shoot some golf balls.  Her sister and nephew had said they didn’t feel like it but it had been a beautiful day so my hair dresser had said, she would like to shoot some golf balls and for an hour they had spent time just leisurely shooting golf balls.  Later her sister and nephew had thanked her for making them shoot golf balls and it hit me, ‘how true”.  So often we have to force ourselves to do something and later feel so grateful that we did even when we did not feel like it.

   Even though this first Christmas season is tough without Roderick and I can’t say that it’s exciting or fun I still want it to be one to look back on and know that it’s been meaningful and we want to go through it in such a way that we can continue on in our journey gratefully.

   So I’ve got a plan on what we will do to include Roderick in our Christmas but I can’t say because after all it’s Christmas and Christmas is full of surprises.

   We have so much to be grateful for and God has given us so many wonderful promises and that is what we will focus on.  I will share a couple paragraphs from my devotions this morning.

  So…how come it doesn’t happen?  Why do we lose loved ones? Why do situations sometimes go badly even after we’ve prayed?

   I can’t tell you why in every case, but we have a choice to make.  We can't stop believing God’s Word just because our circumstances don’t always match up with what it says.  We need to choose to believe.

   This planet has its share of trouble and sometimes bad things happen but our God will never let us down.  If something doesn’t work out the way you had hoped, you may not know why…but you can be sure it isn’t because God wanted it to go badly.  God is good all the time!

  

Roderick checking out his Christmas stocking two years ago