Like the Old Times...

     This was the first Christmas we spent as a ruptured family. I'm not going to spill my parents' dirt over the internet, but something came up over the summer that created a tear between my mom and dad. It feels like we've been living with this problem for years now, but it's only been a little more than six months.
     There's a rift now between what was and what is. Like the Roman calendar centered around the birth of Christ, the calendar of my family's life is now centered around this summer event. Instead of BC, there is BT--Before Truth. And this was our first holiday season After Truth.
     This Christmas felt hollow. I know that every passing year, as we grow older, and there are less presents or cookies and no more Santa, the season dissolves into more of a shadow of those magical memories. But this year, we live with having all of those memories completely invalidated by the Truth we haven't seen until now. So, we only see pain in the memories, and long for those blissful times of ignorance that we'd lived in Before Truth. Christmas morning, after we'd opened presents and charged up our gadgets and played a round of monopoly, we all floated our separate ways. At the end of the night, we came together for a couple of hours and watched some plastic Christmas movies before drifting off to bed. A couple days later, my mom told me that this first AT Christmas had been "hard."
     For half a year now, I've buried my emotions about the situation. But with Christmas and all the family traditions I strive to preserve, my feelings have started bubbling to the surface. It hurts. I want to go back to ignorance. Ignorance felt loving at safe. Ignorance felt like a family. Ignorance felt like Christmas...
     ...But Jesus came on this earth to bring truth. He is Truth, and he values truth. He died for the Truth, and I suppose my family and I will now be crucified with him upon the truth. It's torture now, but I can only look to Christ's example and see that he did rise again. That is my prayer for my family--that we will arise as a stronger, closer, more God-glorifying family, and that a new time period can be added to our calendar--After Restoration.