Holiday time can make it awful difficult to blog on any regular basis. Time spent on the road does not always bring me in contact with a computer. Plus, there are the occasions when my youngest uses the computer for all of his activity. My initial hope was to do some writing over the last few days but that obviously did not happen. One question will be did I get out of practice while busy? Maybe since my writing is not quite the quality of professional writers it will not be too damaging to my efforts. All we can do is aim for a better week of putting down my thoughts here than we did during Thanksgiving.

I do hope that you were able to enjoy the holiday. We will tend to have bittersweet moments during any special time of the year. Losses in life or the ongoing crises that are part of our world cannot be isolated from even the best of holidays. The darker occasions in life do not hesitate just because the calendar says that we should be happy. My encouragement is to remember those whose struggles seem to take on a new dynamic during this time of the year. Pray that God will be gracious to those who are hurting through His presence. Just know that these next few weeks can be very hard on even believers as they recall various points of grief.

Thanksgiving day went pretty well except for a few moments while we were out. This year our choice was to go eat out rather than wrestle with a huge meal. Our destination was a restaurant on the west side of Fort Worth. All went smoothly until my youngest brought the celebration to a standstill. He totally lost his stomach for some reason while the place was full of hungry people. This was not a small wave of nausea. His was a full blown expression of digestive upheaval. I ran to help him along with nudge him toward the restrooms. My little guy was just not handling his moment well. I finally got him back behind closed doors where we could commence his clean up. He was fine after that. One could not ask for more patient people than the ones working there that day. It looked like they did not charge us for some of his meal perhaps due to his display. Tough way to get a discount.

Now you have living proof that even our best efforts may fall short when it comes to the perfect celebration. Maybe the whole point of these holidays is how it connects to even the messy stuff in our world. Just seems hard to have genuine rejoicing when it is not related to our usual pattern of life. Our families come in all shapes and sizes along with more than a few Grinch's in the bunch. Some may travel quite a long way even when their destination may come with its share of painful memories. Real celebrating will always remind us of our ongoing process of living. Here lies the secret of being merry even when our moods run contrary to that idea. Just be who you are while rejoicing for what you have. This way you avoid the added stress of pretending with others. You may have some messy moments but you may be much happier in the long run.

Bro. Trey