Lower me down

Took the tree down and all the other Christmas crap that I could find.
Never fails...every year I find something a few weeks later that I've forgotten to put away.
Felt good to do it too. To get it all put away.
Each year the amount of decor seems to get smaller and smaller.
Don't feel like putting out anymore crap than I absolutely have to.
Not sure why this is.
I love the season, the cold and snow, the winter scenery
I even love my Christmas decorations
Everything's all red and green, silvery and golden glitter.
But the thought of having to re wrap in tissue paper all of those
doo-dads fills me with despair.
I am a portrait of contradictions!
I love Christmas but hate putting up and taking down the decor.
I say that I love the season yet I call the trappings of it crap.
I feel rushed and harried even as I tell myself to slow down and savor it.
I like getting gifts but am disappointed every single year by what I am given.
We eat the same foods, bake the same cookies and call it tradition.
Her pork roast gets drier every year and I am sick to death of "puppy chow"!
We must make this or eat that or it doesn't feel like it's Christmas.
For 7 years we've had no snow for Christmas.
This year we got it and people bitched!
On December 24th I watched people drive like the hounds of hell were chasing after them...
Rolling through stop signs, speeding through neighborhoods, almost mowing down pedestrians in the crosswalks and the excuse they use is called
Last Minute Christmas Shopping.
For me, it gets worse every year.
Seems like people are getting madder and more fed up
and way less tolerant of each other during the holidays.
And I guess you could include me, myself and I in that group.
Although I don't feel mad or fed up.
Just rather blah and tired of it all.
The Christmas dinner that I don't want to go to but I do cuz it keeps the peace in the family,
The decor I hang but want to take down ASAP,
The horrible over-played Christmas carols about Italian donkeys and Hippos on the radio,
Not being able to find anything to buy the Sad Man for a Christmas present every. single. year. because he is the man who has everything, plus he won't give me a wish list.
Trying and failing to keep Jesus is the Reason for the Season in my head.

Yes. Yes. Yes.
I realize that I am blessed.
I'm filled with gratitude.
Thank you Jesus for all that I have and am.
Warm, fed, healthy, surrounded by family.

I ask myself all the time why I feel that I must bitch about my life.
I think the saying is something like....First World Problems.

I've never lived in a hut, in the desert, without clean water.
I've never known gnawing hunger, I've never lived in a war zone.
I've never had to worry about Militants or Guerrilla warfare.
I don't know anything about Famine or selling children into forced labor
in Indonesia making shoes and shirts for Walmart to sell to me.

In my own little corner of the world, I'm safe and healthy and spoiled.
I complain about putting up Christmas decor and detest eating a dry pork roast.
"She made those cookies, again?!?"   is something I've said recently.

So I ask you...Does anybody else feel this way?

Then I find Addie's Blog and part of an answer:
God loves the cynic heart. I thought a lot this year about my own cynicism – the years when it was so ever-present and the ways it continues to linger in certain aspects of my faith life. As with so many things, I think when you begin to recover from cynicism, it’s easy to dismiss it in others. And yet, as I remembered my own mad season, I realized that cynicism is a kind of paralysis that keeps you from asking for what you need. And I want to be the kind of person who picks up the edge of the mat where the paralytic is lying and carries her through the crowds. I want to haul her to the top of that roof, lower her straight down to Jesus.


I realize after reading her blog that maybe I am a cynic.
Well maybe.....

Maybe I am.
Maybe I am mad and ungrateful at times.
Maybe I am tired of eating a dry pork roast from a woman who talks bad about me behind my back.
Maybe I am spoiled by living a healthy, happy, charmed life in the USA.
Maybe I am sick of reading about all of the horrible things we humans do to each other.
Maybe I am done eating breakfast cereal coated in melted frosting and calling it Puppy Chow.

So what? Who cares if I am a cynic?
Me. Maybe I care.
I don't want to be a cynic...not really.
I want to be sweet and nice and loving.
And I fail at this every day.
Miserably.
To be perfectly honest, I am that paralyzed woman on the mat.
I'm unable to get up and do what I want.
So here's what I'm gonna do...
I'm going to let the people around me lower me down into that hut.
That hut that has a hole in its roof.
And through that hole I can see Jesus.
I'm going to reach out to Jesus and let Him heal me.
And when He asks "Who reached out and touched my robe?'
"Who just touched me?"
I'm gonna tell Him it was me.
Me, Lord. It was me.
Me, the tired cynic who feels too paralyzed to change anything about herself.
Me, Lord. The one who complains and gets angry and pissy and crabby.
Me, Lord. The one who's tired of Christmas and puts the decor away too early.
Me, Lord, the one who knows You are the answer.
It was me, Lord.
It's me.

And this from Addie's Blog too:
There are so many of us quietly struggling along the same rocky path.

And if we have the courage to be honest, we just might find each other.

Here's hoping that I can find that same rocky path
and be honest enough and find courage enough
to let someone lower me down into that hole.
Because I believe that there's healing down there folks.

Lower me down People, lower me down!