I’m certainly not old enough to be wise, but this I have learned:

life comes in seasons.

– — –

Too young to know it’s Christmas while my parents open my packages for me.  Four years old, twirling around the living room in my new ballerina outfit.  The bicycle that Santa left beside the Christmas tree the year I was seven years old.  My brother and I sneaking talk radios into our beds so we could plan when to sneak out of our bedrooms to see what was waiting in the living room.

The first year I didn’t believe in Santa but pretended to because my brother still did.  My first Christmas as a teenager, my boyfriend bringing earrings to my house the night before Christmas.  Sweet sixteen, begging for permission to drive myself to my grandparent’s house on Christmas night.   The first time I came home from college, hoping that even if everything else had changed while I was gone that semester, at least Christmas would feel the same.

And then I’m 22, coming home with all my presents wrapped in red and white paper with darling little red bows.  A year later and my diploma is my own gift to myself underneath the tree, graduation only a few days before the holiday.   I’m nearing 25 and planning to bring that boy home with me, devastated when I realize that the relationship is only a decoration for the holidays.

– — –

And today it’s Christmas at age 25, an age where I can’t help but have a whole lot more questions than answers, a whole lot more wishing things could be different and yet wanting them the same, too.  It’s Christmas in my mid-twenties: the Christmas where I’m trying to belong somewhere, maybe just anywhere?  Everybody wants to belong.

And today, on the day that holds all of history together, maybe we all do belong.

“Had Mary been filled with reason there’d have been no room for the child.”

Madeline L’Engle