Black Friday Thoughts - Child-Loss Grief Redefines Values

Black Friday Thoughts

Child-Loss Grief Redefines Values

Tommy and I were talking this "Black Friday" morning about how our values have been redefined, or perhaps better, clarified, since entering Child-Loss Grief. How many years when our children were young did I hit the malls early on Black Friday to get the best deals? I noticed I just wore myself out and exposed myself to many germs just in time to get sick for the holidays. And for what? 

As Tommy says "Child-Loss has exposed our stupidity!" "Stupidity": the things we get caught up in without thinking. It was easy for me to get caught up in the hubbub of the season just because everyone else was doing it and we could save a few dollars... That is, if we don't end up impulse buying along with it ...which I usually did, also getting caught up in the "magic" of the season, rather, more accurately, getting caught up in the "magical thinking" of the season. We tried to recreate the "magic" we felt we had had as children for our own children, yet what did we do? Over-indulge them? Probably.

We have had to reconsider all our actions, and when you are looking forward to having a Christmas to yourself, with nobody around, it helps you to stop and think, "What's really important here?" Of course, for us, the age of our living children helps tremendously. It seems much wiser to give them a more reasonable amount of money so that they can find what they most want instead of us taking energy we don't have to track down those items. So this form of giving becomes the extent of our involvement with "stuff," and that is more apropos to where we really are these days. 

Then it seems we are left with more energy for enjoying the proverbial "real reason for the season" which is captured in the picture at the top of our post. 

Picture, thanks to blog: "Stuff Christians Like" by Jon Acuff