"I'll be home for Christmas...if only in my dreams."

Christmastime.  So many emotions, memories, and aromas evoked with that one simple word.  

For the last 24 years, I’m grateful to say that certain things remained the same for me during Christmastime: being with family, our Christmas tree decorated with sentimental ornaments, a fireplace, truly cold weather and hats/mittens/scarves, Colorado’s snow-covered Rockies, apple cider, caroling, baking, church Christmas program, etc. 

Well, almost none of that was here in Chiang Mai with me this year. 

Not being with family was obviously the hardest part; how I wished I could be back for just one day even to decorate the tree and bake with them.  While I had mentally prepared myself for this separation during the holidays, emotions did overtake me more than once.  The weather was a surprisingly hard component of not being home as well.  Since I’ve never experienced Christmas in a warm climate before, my mind simply couldn’t and wouldn’t equate sweating with Christmas (unless, of course, I was bundled in snow gear and shoveling the driveway or traipsing around on snow shoes).  And where were all the Christmas lights and gazillion banners and store decorations to remind you that it was Christmas?  Oh, right.  Thailand’s a Buddhist country.  They just don’t celebrate it the same way.

So, what do you do when it just doesn’t feel like Christmastime??  How do you enjoy the season when so much of what you associate the holiday with is not within your grasp? 

You go back to the profound basics of Christmas: a Savior is born!  Christmastime may not be the same in Chiang Mai, but my Christmas half way across the world could be the same because Christ is the same…yesterday, today, and forever, the promise in God’s gift of His Son remains!

While it was hard to experience the holidays without my “norms,” I feel as if the Lord stripped away so many of the distractions of the seasons and refocused my heart on Him.  God drew me to Him more than ever this advent season as I thirsted for something to fill the voids.  I ran hard after the advent book I chose this year, The Names of God, which explains the history and meaning behind various names of God, provides opportunities to pray through them, and lays out the promises associated with each one. A world away from home, but I still felt full of His presence and deeply touched by His abounding love.  Yahweh, my Deliverer. Jesus, my Savior.  The King.  The Child.  The Bright Morning Star who heralds in the dawn, the hope of a new day!

How grateful I am that the loss of traditions and norms are overshadowed by the joy, hope, and peace bursting forth from the incarnation!