Why I'm finally sending Christmas cards

aka: the declaration I'm telling myself

I haven’t sent Christmas cards since 2015 (?) maybe 2016, when it was just Jesse and me. Two entrepreneurs with big dreams for our life and high hopes for a baby. And then we got The Call in December of 2017. What a joyous season that was: the last year it’d be just the two of us on any future Christmas cards. 

In April of 2018, Jesse and I flew to China to meet a little girl born to another mother. A precious soul with straight, dark bangs came booming into our lives, with such deep hurt and joy, simultaneously.

And then it happened. They said it might. 

Motherhood swallowed me whole, in every possible way. I had never experienced such love and pure delight. I had never felt so complete, yet also so anxious and alone.

That first December together was magic. I’m certain there was pain, too, but I can’t seem to remember it. It likely had to do with our sweet girl preferring–needing–Jesse to make her feel safe, and me feeling rejected. It likely had to do with me giving all I had and it going unnoticed or unreciprocated. But when I look at the photo album and I see my beautiful girl–two-years-old at the time–snuggled in her cotton Christmas jammies with lavender stripes on her legs and a fuzzy bear on her tummy–holding white, sparkling twinkle lights as Jesse wrapped the tree, the pain fades like a star at dawn. 

Life was full, wild, and wondrous. No time to send a Christmas card.  

The following December, an old, familiar ache returned. Our girl was three and I began wondering how we could possibly fill our home with more joy, snuggles, and sunshine. I heard God whisper words about pregnancy. It seemed absurd considering I’d never been pregnant before, after ten years of marriage. But I opted for obedience, begging God to make his quiet nudge come to life. 

The years chugged on. 

No more babies. No more Christmas cards. I guess you could say I was waiting for the former before I could entertain the latter. 

Each December, I tried to turn the clock back to when we first learned about our girl. I’d close my eyes and envision the heartache, tears, and longing pouring out of me the very seconds my phone rang. I never wanted a Christmas to go by when I didn’t feel the warmth, grace, and pure surprise Jesus had for us with our greatest gift in store.

In the last twenty months, we’ve endured the anguish of an ectopic pregnancy and then two chemical pregnancies after that, via embryo adoption. This Christmas, our family remains a trio, despite what we hoped for, despite the story we thought God was writing. 

As I sit in a long season of grief, I close my eyes and attempt to time travel to six years ago, when I basked in the goodness God had for us that December. I can feel the relief and joy bubble over again. Tangible and new. And so, even though my heart continues to ache, it also swells and beams when I see my daughter’s face. When I hold her long, dangling body. When her eyes smile at mine.

Sometimes, we have to hold onto the gifts he’s already given rather than wanting more. 

I pray–somehow, some way–one December soon that more faces will grace the card tucked neatly in the sharp corners of every envelope we send. But this Christmas, in the midst of loss and an ache I can’t seem to shake, we celebrate the wondrous gifts he’s already given our family.

This morning, at the post office, the woman behind the counter asked how she could help me. 

“Christmas stamps, please,” I said. 

She showed me the choices. I went with the festive woodland animals cozied up in snowy scenes. 

Just buying the stamps felt like a declaration. 

This Christmas is not what I thought it would be, but my family is still good, and whole, and beautiful. I have lost four babies in the last two years, but that doesn’t erase the good he’s already done. 

I stood in a sliver of warm winter light at a mailing station. One by one, peeling the stamps and sticking them to each envelope. A choice, a statement–not to the world, but to myself–that Christmas may not be what I dreamed this year, but it is still coming. 

For now, when I’m not feeling celebratory, I can close my eyes and remember the gift of December six years ago when my phone rang. The gift of my toddler snuggled in baby bear jammies, the lights and her face aglow. The gift of how my now seven-year-old will squeal with delight this coming Christmas morning. And what a wondrous gift that is.  

I straightened my stack of envelopes, just so, and sent them through the slot of the big, blue mailbox.