Holiday Hearts©

A Limerick A Day to Keep You On Your Way©

There once was the perfect holiday season.

Everyone appeared happy and pleasin’.

Faces with smiles.

Hiding the trials,

Of fragile hearts broken without reason.

 

The Perfect Holiday Heart Season

Memories of childhood celebrations shape how we enjoy them as adults, passing down traditions to our children and grandchildren. I don’t believe any family does not go through some trial or pain during these times. May I share with you two significant holidays that shaped my heart thinking for a long time.

Thanksgiving.  As far back as I can recall Thanksgiving was always at my parent’s house. The earliest memory I have is about the year I was ten.  My mother was a fabulous cook.  For sure it was from being Italian. My dad was Polish and rarely ate anything remotely spicy, salted, and never anything with onions. My mother would make two different kinds of turkey stuffing, one with onions and one without. I never thought much about that at ten.  At ten I was trying to learn how to roll pie crust.  My mother was very skilled at this.  There were no frozen pie crusts back then, it was truly homemade.

That year when I was ten, my three older sisters (13, 14, and 16) were also helping out with all the Thanksgiving food preparations. We would be hosting at least twenty people. My mother was rolling out the pie crust for an apple pie. With the small pieces left over, she had shown my sisters how to make cinnamon crust rolls.  Now it was my time to learn. Watching the “expertise” of their creativity was no match for mine.  After several attempts to create a matching masterpiece like my siblings, my mother “complimented” my hard work.  Looking over my creation she laughingly said, “You will never be a good cook.”   My ten-year-old mind and heart received those words like the crushing pounding of the rolling pin upon the crust. I felt no humor, just heartbroken by being not able to please my mother.  I never have become or desired to be a good cook. 

Many Thanksgivings have passed since that fateful one.  As a young mother myself I can recall making desserts to bring to my parent’s home. Not one of them included a homemade pie crust. Even though I do believe I forgave my mom a long time ago I would still hear those words echo in my head. “You will never be a good cook.” I got good at ignoring them but just like the little broken pieces of pie crust my mother did not want to waste, Holy Spirit, in His precious patience kept those broken pieces until I let him help me see how creative God had made me.

Fifty-five years have passed since my heart was broken,  Five is the number of grace and I sense God has gifted me double grace. This year I felt it was time to work deeper on my writing skills. God prospered me so I could hire a Cognitive Release Coach specifically for breaking off strongholds and blockages for writing. Like a perfectly timed pie crust, my second to last session with Dr. Amanda Helman formulated around this memory.  I had already formed the limerick for this month and began writing about the pie crust memory. With her help, I went back to that original breaking of my creative heart to see more clearly the deeper pain I felt with my mother ‘s words.  Our hearts truly are fragile and at that moment in time, my heart had already been broken by other trauma.  This incident, though seemingly nothing to my siblings or mother, intensified the feeling of already being the outsider, adding to my belief I could never please my mother.  With no defense from my sisters as well, it deepened the feeling of disconnect from my own family.  It’s true said my heart: I will never be a good cook. If I can’t be creative I will always be an outsider. With each passing Thanksgiving, I just went through the motions believing I had to be part of this baking ritual. And every year I felt more distant. After I was married I didn’t go at all.  Even though I wasn’t married long it wasn’t until my daughters were teenagers that I came back to the ritual.  By then I was much closer to God and He had been healing me of many hurts. But the wound had festered so long it unconsciously oozed out poison every Thanksgiving.  By the time my children were also wanting to help with the desserts I had become critical of their creativity. It took me a long time to understand the roots of those feelings and forgive my mother. But not before I wounded my own children’s fragile hearts setting up years of not feeling connected as a family and living out ways that made that lie look like truth.

My session with Dr. Helman was to go back and relive that scene in my mind but this time with Holy Spirit.  Helping me see through His eyes and heart released the lie that I am not creative.   I am not discounted from family unity. 

As we have come to understand all hearts are fragile and easily wounded.  I do not know what my mother may have been feeling that particular Thanksgiving and perhaps how fragile her heart might have been. Was she enjoying Thanksgiving preparations?  I will never know this side of heaven…but how I miss her cooking!

I pray my children are set free from any pain I caused them to not have the perfect holiday season.

Christmas. I have bits and pieces of different Christmas years but two life-changing memories are the years I was twelve and the year I was sixteen. At twelve I absolutely did not want a doll.  No, I wanted a red fire truck.   If you ask someone what they want and they tell you,  why do you need to convince them they want something else? Or more precisely,  the thing you want to give them.  I just knew at twelve years old I was done with dolls.

The feeling crept in again of not pleasing my mother.  Being older I was more aware of my feelings as well as my mother’s. She was genuinely hurt that I did not want a doll. Our subconscious minds are programmed by the feelings of experiences, not just the experiences. This experience of my mother’s displeasure is magnified by the feeling I had when I believed I failed her baking lesson. She pressed me several times. “No, I do not want a doll. I want a red fire truck.”  As much as my mother could not understand I did not want to be treated as a little girl anymore, she nor I could understand the need for the red fire truck.  Only later in life did I realize it was my mother’s pain of knowing her last daughter was growing up and childhood innocence was done.  As for me, I realized the red fire truck would make me more like my three younger brothers who appeared to be more validated and loved by my father because they were boys. A traditional boy present might make me feel more accepted, right?  If I can’t please my mother, can I please my father?  A fragile heart can appear to speak without reason.

My mother was a very generous person.  Our Christmas trees were abundantly overflowing with presents under them.  Of course, there were seven children to buy for. By the time I was sixteen my older sisters were no longer living at home but with their spouses. This only increased the amount of gift-giving for my mother. Her tradition had been to wait until Christmas Eve to do all the wrapping. Not Christmas Eve day, but night, late night.  She would hide all the gifts in different places in our house.  There were still three younger brothers at home who by now were not sleeping until at least midnight.  The collection of gifts would be gathered on our dining room table once they were asleep. This year my mom asked if I wanted to help her wrap.  It was overwhelming!  How did she ever do this by herself for so many years?

My mother was tired. She had been working outside the home for ten years now.  I was the last daughter at home.  We stopped going to relatives on Christmas day because our family day was big enough and long enough. This would of course again mean food preparation.  My sisters would bring food but my mother still had the main dishes to prepare.  Yes…I helped cook nothing!  I baked nothing!  BUT…I did say yes to helping her wrap gifts.

Our time together felt awkwardly uncomfortable to me.  There were so few times it was just my mother and me.  There were always my sisters and brothers to fill the space.  I could almost ignore that nagging feeling I was not part of this family. My father did not help but he was quite methodical in understanding the process of wrapping gifts with the least amount of wrapping paper. There I sat with my mother, past midnight, wrapping what felt like a never-ending pile of gifts.  I couldn’t tell you much of our conversation but I  remember the feeling.  Yes, you may be catching on by now.  The heart feels so many things.

That night I felt an invisible chasm between us. I wanted to feel deeply connected but how does a teenager do that?  Especially in a family that does not verbally say, “I love you”, nor express physical affection. So, there we sat, perhaps three feet from each other, sharing scissors, scotch tape, and wrapping paper. Some of these gifts were going to need creative wrapping skills. The snow was falling outside, making a beautiful Christmas scene of peace and stillness.  It was the kind of snow that glistened when the air was several degrees below freezing. The snow reminded me of Christmas movies where families are warm in their houses with blazing fireplaces and everyone looks so happy, loved, and connected.  Hugs and kisses and intimate conversations are happening. 

BUT….there you are…sitting at the dining room table hearing, “That’s too much paper.  You don’t need that much scotch tape.”  And the look that says who taught you how to wrap? Jolted out my perfect Christmas movie feeling widening the chasm. The night ends with the gifts all wrapped. My heart is wrapped as well.  There is no connection of mother/daughter closeness.  At sixteen the best I could do was wrap another fragile place in my heart with enough scotch tape so the pain of disappointment is concealed. Like the criticism of Thanksgiving preparations, the criticism of Christmas wrapping fell on my children as well. Fortunately, I believe they overcame their mother’s neurotic need to save the wrapping paper at all costs.  They show it by making sure the trash bag is ready for the wrapping paper to be tossed out within seconds of it being torn off the gift.

How long can you keep a gift wrapped?

As my adult years out of the home came with the same tradition of waiting until Christmas Eve to wrap I could now feel my mother’s fatigue. I sat alone wrapping gifts as a single mother.  I think my mother, though not single, sat alone often too. Fragile hearts in need of love.

I never mastered gift wrapping either. I don’t care now. I  did receive a gift that Christmas Eve that required no gift wrapping. It was my mother’s unique gift of writing little rhymes on some of the gifts.  They would give clues as to what the gift was. I am sure this helped my mind and heart forget for a while how much I wanted to be affectionately hugged by her. I wish I could recall the rhymes we made up.  Yet, I know they don’t really matter because this is where I finally found some level of actual acceptance and connection, however brief it may have been. Christmas Day the little rhymes were read and no one understood this was my mother’s way of connection to show love.  It had become mine too.  I didn’t realize that until the writing of this blog. 

What can I offer as Perfect Gifts during the Holidays?

My need to be loved and validated has cost me some very painful holidays.  When my children were young it was simple to please them.  They weren’t trying to figure out their mother’s fragile broken heart.  I wasn’t either.  It was easy then to have your children’s affection.  But the fragility of humanity is the things we pass down to them when we are blind to our brokenness.  It often feels too late to reverse our responses to our children that were not always kind, fueled by our own painful childhood experiences.  Years can pass unaware of heart issues that surface during holiday seasons.  It is so much easier to shut down and wait for the days to finally be done hoping next year will be better. No amount of perfectly created desserts or wrapped gifts can compare to the heart whose sole desire is love and acceptance. The only heart I know who is perfect is Jesus.  Why else do we (or hopefully do) include Him in what we call the Holiday Season? We thank Him for abundant provision on Thanksgiving.  We sing songs of Glory to the One we call Savior at Christmas. He gave His heart to be broken for the sins of the world so we could be healed of our broken hearts.

This Holiday Season let Jesus heal the fragile places of your heart.

Pray this prayer with me.

Dear Jesus,

You have seen every day of our lives.  You know how much pain and heartache we experience and often pass on to our children and loved ones when we are unaware or unwilling to let You heal us.  Forgive us. Give us the courage to look deep into every fragile place in our hearts.  We give You permission to enter those places. Heal. Restore. Unify. Bring Peace and Good Will to all Men.  Glory to God!  In Jesus Name.  Amen.

Luke 2:10-14  King James Version

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

 

Written by Paula Ann Kochanek

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