I boarded a plane today and flew away from my kids and grandkids. 

I hate leaving my loved ones! 

I do not know about you, but separation from those I love makes me feel like my heart is literally being ripped in two!

It’s not like, “practice makes perfect,” the more you do it the easier it gets.

Not for me! I tell myself all of the right things, you know, all of the things everyone says to you when you say how sad you are that you are separated from the ones you love the most:

“You just had a week together, you should be happy about that.”

“You are going to see them again in a little while.”

“You should just be happy that you have a family.”

“Weren’t you just together last month?”

“Just count your blessings and be glad for the time you have.”

I repeat all of these phrases and thank God for the gift that He has given me!

Yet, my heart remains heavy, the sorrow comes in waves and at times the tears flow and my heart aches.

When you love so deeply separation hurts.

As a little girl two of the most significant people in my life, my grandpa and grandma Switter, my mom’s parents, lived in another state. We always got to see them for Christmas and during the Summer time.

I remember the anticipation of waiting for them to arrive! I would sit by the big plate glass window in our front living room and dance around for hours staring intently out waiting for their car to pull into our driveway!

They would emerge from that car with the biggest smiles on their faces and open up their trunk full of presents and the biggest Tupperware container that has ever been made, full of my grandma‘s homemade Christmas cookies! I can still taste them all these years later! She made her cut out cookies with a butter recipe that made them so soft and delicious in your mouth, not crunchy like the sugar cookie ones! She had Santa faces that had white fluffy beards and the perfect red Santa cap with a big fluffy white snowball on the end of it perfectly drawn, long before the ‘Christmas Cookie Challenge,’ ever appeared on a network (She would have won by the way!)

We would play games, we would make meals together, we would laugh and sing Christmas carols till we could hardly speak. We would go to church together on Christmas Eve and come home and open up the Christmas jammies that they had waiting for us under the Christmas tree. We would go to bed and hardly sleep that night so anxious to get up the next morning.

Christmas day would start bright and early with presents unwrapped and paper strewn everywhere, followed by a delicious Christmas breakfast. We would clean up and then wait for more family to arrive as my grandma and mom in their aprons would work so hard to prepare the perfect Christmas dinner! The evening always ended with a special Christmas movie. 

I could not have felt more warm, secure and loved than I did every year at Christmas time!

My home life was good but not great! There was hurt and pain and anger and strife and unfaithfulness. But when my grandparents were there it was like a piece of heaven came down to earth! It was all put on pause for the whole Christmas season… and then they left! I stood by that same plate glass window and watched their car pull out of my driveway. And the separation felt so strong that I thought my heart would literally rip in two.

I stood by that window long after they had pulled away and tears streamed down my face as my broken heart poured out it’s sadness of them leaving. 

Separation by definition causes pain.

One thing is literally being pulled away from another! While sometimes this may be a positive separation, the majority of the time it is a painful one.

As I sat on that plane early this morning being separated from those I love the most, I did thank God for his incredible, undeserved blessings to me! And as I was thanking Him it struck me, He willingly separated Himself from His One and Only Son, because He loved me so much!

“And the angel answered her, “ The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of The Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy-The Son of God.”

Luke 1:35

Christmas isn’t Christmas without separation! The sweetest Christmas songs we sing, ‘Away in a Manger, ‘Silent Night,’ ‘Hark The Herald Angels Sing,’ and on and on and on, all proclaim the separation of God’s Son from Himself!

TRUTH BOMB

GOD’S LOVE IS PERFECTED IN SEPARATING HIMSELF FROM HIS SON FOR US!

Love is perfected in the act of giving! That giving causes separation. God selflessly separated Himself from His Son for a time so that one day we could all be together forever!

I want to be prepared this season to receive this selfless gift, don’t you? Join me back here through the month of December as we “Make Way for “The Way!”

Speak Truth Love