Holiday Time...

Well it's that time again when we start making plans for the holidays. For me, Thanksgiving will be awsome this year. The four of us and my sister, Cameo with her boys will be going to a cabin at Bass Lake Thursday and Friday. I will be off work Monday, Tuesday and Wensday to make the preparation and off to Bass Lake on Thursday morning. We will eat, sleep and be merry for two wonderful days.
Really, I dread the holidays. It's not a real happy time for me. Growing up in a home of step fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, it was never really family. My mother is on her 5th marriage, my dad is on his 3rd and my bio dad is not in my life at this time by his choosing and ,Grandma Miller's passing five years ago. So, the warm fuzzy feelings of the holidays were only known on those Christmas eves as a very young girl at my Grandma and Grandpa Cunnings' house. All my aunts, uncles and cousins on my Mom's side of the family, (The Wallace side didn't celebrate holidays), would gather at our grandparents house and we would all open presents. We would sing, eat and play with cousins all evening long. That was one of the few constants in our growing up.
Then came the divorce and here this year and there next. "You spent more time with this parent last year than you did me", or "oh no, another boyfriend or girlfriend and their kids to contend with."

Even through I am grown and have children of my one, I still struggle with the holidays. We haved always tried to satisfy all the "parents", in laws included, and Nate and the girls really enjoy going from place to place. I, on the other hand, would rather forget it was a holiday, but I put on the face and go on.
I wonder what it would be like to have those warm fuzzies, the feeling of belonging, being a family, and feeling important, special and cherished. I can feel all those things about my kids and hubby, but not myself. God is really working on me accepting that I am HIS daughter. A princess of the King. It's funny how I have told my girls those things and they are so presious. Still at 41, I still struggle with those feelings.
So I have to remember what the holidays really mean. To be thankful for God's blessings and for Christmas, for God's sacrifice so I might be saved. With that in persective, it's not so hard to endure....LOL
I'm not whinning or really complaining.It's the way it is, but God has been way to good to me to stop thanking Him and stop celebrating Truth, salvation and freedom from the world.
"Thank you Lord for being EVERYTHING that I need!!!!"