Christmas Time

Christmas is in three days.  Colored lights and Santa with his rein-deers line the quiet streets in our community and the stores are bustling with last minute shoppers.  These symbols celebrating the birth into our world of a new consciousness, only act as reminders of the sadness I have forged through these past years.  Perhaps the invitation to be joyful is acting as a catalyst to bring up my memories of a very difficult time that I would rather forget.   I know, but obviously not practicing, there is no such thing as ‘forgetting’, just repressing, avoiding or pushing away.  So maybe my Christmas message is to look straight into the past from the present.  Writing is my therapeutic and creative messenger to myself, as this journey is revealed to me step by step.  For this healing process, I will share some of those feelings that want to be freed and see where it leads me.

My action plan for dealing with Ulf’s situation began in 2004.   At this time all my instincts were on high alert.  This left little time for me to assess my emotional reactions to the time bomb that had been activated by the ‘dementia’ diagnoses. Still, there were times I would stop in the middle of a grocery aisle and begin to cry.  The grief of seeing the person you dearly love, slowly disappear was heart wrenching. There were a multitude of emotions and adjustments during this time of uncertainty.  Ulf was frantically grappling with the disorienting changes in his world that he was experiencing, and I was trying to simply make sense of it all.  This was one of those ‘trying to stay afloat on the lake when the dam breaks,’ periods.  It is better known as a crisis!

There was little or no support for me because people tend to retreat from an impending flood.  Even my best friend, Ulf, was not available to help. I felt alone and thus went into survival mode.  None of the lessons dear to my heart about a Higher Source, God or Miracles came running to my rescue.  My heart was heavy and I felt separate and abandoned by these very sources that spoke of unity.  Everything that had inspired me only served to remind me of what was missing.  I was not interested in the ‘big’ picture but just in my little world that was falling apart.  I was walking through my ‘valley of the shadow of death,’ as it were.  Even my much earlier impending death to cancer did not have this sort of impact on me.  Nothing in my experience equaled this inability to control my circumstances even though I intellectually knew control was an illusion in life.  The experience of our perception of separation on arrival to this reality took on new meaning.

So much of my life has been filled with stimulating, externally directed events. This sense of being alone, however, has also been an opportunity for me to look within to unraveling the unnecessary clutter of my own mind.  I am experiencing both the restrictive and disconnect feelings of isolation and the connective, expansive space of peaceful solitude.  I have noticed that within that expanded space, I have attracted whatever I need in the moment and the feeling of separation disappears.  Ulf is highly sensitive to any shift in energy, so he has been my ever-present teacher in staying ‘awake’.

Revisiting and bringing fresh air to those initial memories has lifted for now, my holiday remorse.   I am asking for further guidance in allowing those feelings to be liberated.   Awakening to the improbable result of surrendering to ‘what is,’ is my Miracle.  The transformation of the sense of separation to one of joining is what the Christmas message is about.

A Course in Miracles says, “Watch with me, angels, watch with me today.  Let all God’s holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while Heaven’s Son is born.  Let earthly sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed disappear.  Let Christ be welcomed where He is at home.  And let Him hear the sounds He understands, and see but sights that show His Father’s Love.  Let Him no longer be a stranger here, for He is born again in me today.”

Christmas Time celebrates the end of separation.  We are no longer alone in whatever journey we imagine we take.  As this awareness dawns on us, Miracles light our path leading to Peace and Love.

Merry Christmas!

Copyright 2009 Beverly Hamilton

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Tags: A Course in Miracles, Christmas, Dementia, Holidays, Memory Loss, Peace by Efrat Sar Shalmon