So hey, maybe it’s time to just take a step back out of the day and out of the hectic, to look at the big picture. Is it really all that and worth getting anxious about? Is it really?
Sometimes, we get a clearer view when we distance ourselves from the activities! Grab a cup of Christmas tea and breathe through the next moment. Sometimes if we step back just a bit, we can see the facade and maybe begin to remove some of the layers, just to lay it all out before ourselves and our Saviour, in these final days of our Advent season! What ploughs through, that needs not to be so aggressive? Panic? Fear? Worry? Failure to get done what you so planned to do? Christmas isn’t about what we do or how we do it or how much we can do? It’s about enjoying precious moments with family and friends through our imperfections. It’s about forgetting the deadlines, or at least placing them into proper perspective!
So hey! This busy day you’re in, it’s time for tea and refreshment. Take time to come before the Lord and Savior and in quiet moments just light a candle ~ just you and Him alone. Let His words be a Lamp to your feet and a light to your pathway of next steps. Ask for His counsel, act on His still, quiet voice, and begin to peel away those things that shouldn’t be there cluttering up your beautiful Advent season.
“Tis a time for warm delights, family traditions, memories, and making more. Don’t let the sweet moments of the season dissipate into busy, chaotic schedules and fast-paced rituals, just because! Don’t let them sink into fearful thoughts and panic moments of ‘What’s next.” Rather, find ‘calm’ in His presence! Delight in His words and a new strength in His power!
So go ahead light that candle just between you and our Lord and find peace, find Joy, and find a love so extraordinary it will soften the harshest moments of your fear, anxiety, chaos, and strife.
“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40: 30 31
Unwrap God’s divine Gift of JOY in the quiet silences of the moment
So hey you there, with heavy heart and hard circumstances beating down your door, there is blessing there, because the joy of the Lord alone, is our strength and in His presence alone, is joy beyond our comprehension. I know it sounds so cliche doesn’t it, to say there’s blessing tucked away in the hard places? But the Apostle Peter knew that blessing, like ‘treasures’, lay hidden in trials as he wrote to encourage the persecuted Christians in his day! Still today, beautiful one, his words echo through to us, right here, right now, in this season of celebration of our Lord’s birth, piercing through our dark days, hard times, isolation, loneliness and rejection. This season of holly, jolly? It’s not about comfort, good things, and happiness, and although the world places high emphasis on such things, It’s not about that! It’s about a sense of deep, inner peace in our Saviour’s presence and a trust and contentment in all things that He works in our waiting. It’s focusing on His presence in us that brings a sense of trust to our hearts and minds to erase the depth of the struggle, the intense fear, and the painful aloneness and replace it with a joy unspeakable. 
1 Peter 1:7-9 So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold-though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world….though you do not see Him now you trust Him and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. The reward for trusting Him will be the salvation of your soul.”
You’ve been entrusted with gifts from heaven, all ‘little life’, wrapped up and so tenderly placed in your lap. And there you are!! Smack dab in the middle of days that don’t end and nights that don’t sleep. Those gifts of life are yours to cherish, to love, and to nurture, guide, teach and train and when that journey overwhelms your beautiful soul, remember King Lemuel’s mom had some good words of advice for him in Proverbs 31: 10, 17, 25, 26, 28. She told him exactly how fortunate he would be to find a woman of noble character just like you. You may be tired and exhausted but your value is outstanding… “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies…….she sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks…she is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue…Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also and he praises her.”
Hope and Healing In Hard Places 