Looking for the Christmas Spirit

Roy L. Smith once said, "He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree." 

I'm ashamed to admit that the Christmas spirit has not completely entered my heart this year. 

Maybe it's all of the changes I had to endure for the 500th time, or maybe even trying to process all of the good I am experiencing now... I am just finding it incredibly difficult to get into the season this year.

I forced myself to put up a Christmas tree. Holidays are incredibly important to me, and I knew if I did not put one up, any shred of hope of even finding the Christmas spirit would be completely lost in 2014. 

Maybe it is because I might have gone to church twice this entire year. The girl who used to show up every Sunday for mass, and go to a weekly bible study, AND used to be a youth group leader, AND used to be in the Ladies Auxiliary for the Knights of Columbus has fallen off the band wagon. The church that once welcomed me with open arms does not seem as a friendly place once married and divorced twice. I'm Catholic. They don't play when it comes to keeping your promises to God.

Maybe I felt like the world sort of moved against me this year. Just when things were slowly coming together financially, as well as personally, the universe tossed me around a bit more and made me question my whole purpose... again. 

Maybe the lack of emotional support in my personal life did what I have been working so hard to avoid - make me feel nothing. Coldness.. and walls. 

Maybe I'm not so naive to believe everything works out in the end, and maybe.. just maybe.. the birth of Christ and all that it is associated with was not resonating the way it should. 

Last year, I felt it. I got it. Read it HERE.  But a lot can happen in a year.. a whole lot. I watched as everything I had built began to crumble... again. Then.. in grand happenstance, it turned right back around. As it always does. That little roller coaster called life.

I have so much to be grateful for, and please know I am. I just want that emotional connection to the season that I felt not too long ago.

Perhaps some how the Christmas spirit will sneak back in.. perhaps I will feel what I need to feel, and some day.. some way.. I'll get it.. like I did 12 months ago.