I'm supposed to be finishing my flash lesson which I'm presently four weeks behind on for my online course. But I can't seem to will self to do industrious. I'm feeling heavy and cerebral and I've been feeling this way all week. The holidays. Do they ever force a kind of plastic happiness on you? Do they ever compel you to push all that grief and distress all the way there under the tree skirt, because you are meant to think those feelings are immaterial?

Because I think those feelings should be allowed to coexist there with merry and bright and eyes all aglow, without being tagged Scrooge. Without a Bah Humbug Dismissal.

I've been hearing of so many painful things happening in the lives of my family and friends this week. I won't list them like a rap sheet of tragic. But I won't Polyannalyze them away as if they should be marginalized because it's the holidays.

At the heart of this season for me is a spirit of sharing, and sometimes it is our burdens that are meant to be parceled out so that somehow, the sadness truly can be divided in love.

Lately, I'm lifting up a lot of prayers all day long, and honestly, I'm having some chats with God right now that you do not want to listen in on. And yet, I am so glad that God is so much bigger than all of the stuff that this world can afford us. I'm buoyed by His assurance that His mercy is good and true.

"But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies." ~ Lamentations 3:32

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I've got also two little gems looking up at me that remind me of one more mark of this season. The beauty and innocence of a child's belief in all that is good.