95 - Living with Heart During the Holidays
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
It is amost Thanksgiving, and Christmas is just around the corner. How are you going to keep Christ in Christmas this year? I recommend spending a few minutes each day in December reading The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional. This devotional will take you through the Bible, from Genesis to the birth of Jesus. Each day focuses on God’s protection of the royal line of Jesus and God’s plan of redemption for His people.
We are made for more
October to April opens up the most magical time of the year and potentially the most painful.
As the fall approaches and the “harvest” season settles into our consciousness, we begin to long for what the holidays are created to offer, family, friends, and fellowship.
The windows of the “soul” open to our heavenly longings as the holiday season of anticipation begins. The window remains open until the new year begins, our resolutions have turned back into daily life, and we lift the “heavy burden” of getting back to work—we prepare to pay our taxes in April!
If we allow ourselves to long for what we dream the holidays can offer, we will also need to allow ourselves to grieve what they cannot give us—heavenly completion on earth:
It is okay to grieve
The family gatherings will not live up to what we dream at the worst, and they will end with departures at their best.
The friends we love to be with will need to return to their places of other purposes.
The fellowship that blesses us will also come to an end.
We can experience heavenly hints of completion, but not get to remain in the place of completion.
The holidays awaken us to holy moments of seeing how life could be, or is created to be, but this is still not heaven.
In the movie “Field of Dreams” a character asks, “Is this heaven?” The answer to the beautiful question of hope is, “No, this is Iowa.” We can taste heaven here during the holiday season, but not keep it or possess it; we can only take time to live it by bringing family and friends together in fellowship.
The need to grieve:
The holidays awaken us to our deepest desires to be in communion with loved ones and to celebrate love and life, and the God who gave us both. When we do so,
We will also be stopping to recognize who isn’t there any longer, for whatever reason.
We will be recognizing the preciousness of the time you have together.
We will also be facing the departures that are always inevitable, even the growth and “growing up” of children who are still at home for the next years.
If we are willing to face our losses, we can experience our joys even more.
During the holidays, we must not run from inevitable grief by attempting to exaggerate the joy by overdoing or overspending. We need to focus on relationship fellowship and its joys more than the things that can distract us from the grief that comes with love and life.
Concentration on relationship:
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, an 85+ longitudinal study about health and well-being, has concluded that strong relationships are key to a fulfilling and healthy life. The long-term study shows that joy and well-being are more strongly influenced by social connections than wealth or fame. Its conclusions are contained in a book called, The Good Life.
Because the holidays open us up to the need for family, friends, and fellowship, we need to concentrate on the work of being in healthy relationships, whether through
forgiveness seeking
dealing with regrets
making repair
setting boundaries
avoiding distractions from what matters most, and more
The holidays move our hearts to long for the life we are created to have, in relationship with our own hearts, the hearts of others, and the heart of God who created us like this.
Therefore, to thrive during the holidays means that we need to move any obstacles that are possible to move to allow us to have the “good life” we are created to have—even with all of its difficulties and struggles.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center