Kate Winslet.

It's Christmas. Usually, I love Christmas. I am the first person to start playing the Charlie Brown Christmas album, and to put up the tacky Christmas Cat. This season has always been a time tinged with just a little bit of very real magic.

This year, though, there is a part of me (the majority) that would be happy to skip over Christmas all together. Not because of the hustle and bustle, or the commercialism, or the merriment. But just because I cannot muster up the energy to pretend to be jolly. I'm not jolly this month. Here's the thing. I think I expected that, given how the rest of this year went, December would be some happy holiday fix to eleven months of learning, and growing, and big time challenge. What actually happened is that December started out like this: Me, completely alone in a two-bedroom apartment. I am Kate Winslet in that scene in "The Holiday", with the dog and the scarf and the stove.

Alone is a situation I hate. It's a personality type thing, a lifestyle thing, and just a me thing. The first time my college roommate wasn't home for a weekend and I had the apartment to myself, I couldn't sleep. I almost always ask someone to run errands with me, because it's just better that way. And, okay, I get it. Being alone is not a huge deal. People do it all the time. Some people, I've heard, actually enjoy it. Not me. Especially not at Christmas.

But here I am. And I don't think it's an accident. It's just another step. I can almost audibly hear Jesus saying, "Trust, my girl. That is what I am building in you. Hang in there." The snarky child in my heart wants to respond, "Really? For REAL, though?! We aren't done with this yet??" To which He gently answers, "No."

Which, you know, is actually the most incredibly beautiful gift. I think. Well, no, I know it is. I know that what God has shown me this year, and what He will continue to show me every day until Paradise,  is an unconditional and relentless love that will not allow for half-finished work. He is not going to let me get away with happiness, when what He wants for me is holiness. Not that the two cannot coincide. I genuinely believe they can (and will) be one and the same. But sometimes, the road to holiness means walking through decidedly unhappy things. Like being alone at Christmas.

The truth is, I am not actually Kate Winslet in "The Holiday". I'm not going to sniff the gas fumes off my stove (I am going to California over the holidays, though). There are moments of self-pity in which I convince myself that my life is the worst and how could anyone have luck this bad. I compare and speculate about everyone around me and how they all look so happy and why am I the only tragic person in this city and why am I at this wedding alone right now. Thankfully (and through no power of my own), those moments are becoming fewer. Well, not fewer. But more short-lived. Because what is real, what is beginning to outshine the fear and the self-pity, is peace. Peace that whispers this really is just a season, spring is coming, and that which has died will be reborn in the most glorious way.

I think that peace is called hope. And, if I'm not mistaken, hope is the foundation of Christmas in the first place. So no, I'm not jolly this year. But I am hopeful. Persistently hopeful in present discomfort. Feeling very alone, but not truly alone at all. Because He is Immanuel, God with us. God with me.