healing – Sharon O'Connor

Is Your Christmas Tree Up Yet?

Our pastor asked the question last Sunday at church. The sermon topic: Thankfulness. A number of people raised their hands to say, “YES!”. Others groaned.

How could anyone allow Christmas decor in November??

Novembers growing up on Spencer Avenue were dedicated to Thanksgiving. Christmas came cheerfully into focus once December arrived and not a day before. Our home even had its own Thanksgiving Tree made by mom. A tangible reminder that being thankful was its own kind of gift.

When I got married, my husband began decorating for Christmas in November. You see, he had been homeless for a time before God drew him to Christ. Christmases were a time of darkness and despair because of choices he made in his young adult life.

When Jesus Christ changed his eternal destination, the Christmas celebration took on a whole new meaning for my husband. Decorations appeared everywhere the eye could see starting in November.

One November this very week fourteen years ago almost toppled us. I came home from a week-long hospital stay with a colostomy and a cancer diagnosis. Thankfulness was a tear-filled choice. Family helped us decorate. Green wreaths and soft Christmas lights filled the space where I recovered. We caught our breath, steadied our gaze on Christ, and navigated our way, over time, back to hope.

Randy Alcorn shared this on social media recently:

God has built into us a nostalgia for the world that once was, before sin and curse and death and suffering. We are homesick for Eden, for its beauties and pleasures and health and vibrant relationships. “I long for Your salvation, O Yahweh, and your law is my delight. Let my soul live that it may praise You, and let Your judgements help me.” Psalm 119:174-175, LSB

Since the Great Family Storm of 2010, November sort of wraps us up in nostalgia, a remembrance of sorrow, thoughts of things broken and healed, a promise of peace, and a yearning for the Savior who will return and be, surely, the reality of how a happy Christmas makes us feel. Finally at home.

For the record, so far this year, three trees are decorated and brightly declaring Christmas is on the way.

Friend, if you’re homesick for less difficult days, or facing challenges that are shadowing the season, I pray that God will bless you with his kindness and love and great comforting presence as we enter this season of giving thanks.

Sharon's Journal

Looking for Color

by Sharon

I couldn’t wait to get into the woods this past weekend. Saturday morning’s agenda started with sipping coffee next to Tom and watching the back yard show. The green path into the woods has slowly been transformed to a carpet of gold and tan leaves. The day before, we spied moving shadows of brown and white as deer made their way through the trees. Two doe ventured down into our yard, taking their time to nibble at the rhododendrons, before sashaying back into their woods. One paused long enough for a photo.

Every year at this time I have a system of mental notches related to which month and which cancer diagnosis, treatment, surgery, or test result from 2010-2013. Autumns have been seasons with difficult hues and unwelcome changes. October 1, 2012 found us sitting in the oncologist’s office listening to the words, “Your cancer has returned.”

Hunting season. Healing season. The two are intertwined in my head.

On this morning ten years to the day later, I grabbed my usual hunting weapon of choice, a camera. Tom reminded me to put on an orange vest because it was the first day of bow season. I pulled the material over my sweatshirt, grabbed my sturdy stick, and started walking. The trusty wooden staff kept steady rhythm while I cleared my head. I was looking for color.

The previous weekend I visited my mom. We were talking about autumn and the outdoors. She said, “I do wonder what ever happened to your dad’s walking stick.”

The wooden staff had been gifted to my father years ago, chosen thoughtfully for him by one of my brothers and sister-in-law.

“I have dad’s walking stick,” I reminded mom. “You or he gave it to me when we moved into our home, I think, back in 2010.” The year of my first steps through cancer. “I use it every time I walk in the woods.”

Mom smiled. “Oooh that makes me so happy to know one of you kids has the walking stick, and that you use it. I’m so glad!”

Dad passed away in August 2012 shortly after his 80th birthday and just before my second cancer diagnosis in October 2012. I thought about him a lot after the conversation with mom. God entrusted dad with a musical gift that wound down through his family tree and branched deep into ours. Melody flowed freely from dad’s fingertips on a guitar. Maybe that was how he cleared his head and found the color.

On October 1, 2022, the forest was dressed richly in greens, greys, yellows, and orange. Black tree trunks. Brown branches. Clumps of red way up high where tree top foliage burned red with fiery brilliance on the way down to winter. Deer tracks in the dirt. Gratitude in my soul.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for your steady presence in my life, and for filling our world with your color.

My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.

Psalm 57:7