I still hate piñatas.

Have I ever told you how much I HATE piñatas....yes those cardboard, candy-filled things you swing blindly at, at birthday parties.... Well I hate them and still sense immediate panic if I see one even now. Something about getting bulldozed over one two many times as a party goer, by candy hungry savage fellow grade schoolers, who could care less about the unsteady kid in the mix.....

So yeah I HATE piñatas and totally deprived my offspring of such joys...

For months now I've felt...well like a piñata...

Swinging wildly, getting whacked with one thing or another or another.... Struggle...hurt...struggle...hurt...struggle.

Unexpected. Deeply personal. Private. Difficult. Embarrassing. And because of that all my usual coping strategies...writing, talking to a dear friend, hilarious passive-aggressive Instagram posts...just weren't an option.

Tears. Sorrow. Frustration. Confusion. Hurt.

So many things all at once, I simply couldn't catch my breath... I could feel my courage draining and my faith leaving, that actually scared me...prayers lost as things got so much harder, are you kidding me???

Why???

I spent  months, knowing that no one knew how much I was really hurting.

I felt powerless at the mercy of others choices, anger, and hurt.

"I didn't let all this happen at once to punish you, Robin. I needed to show you the depth of [their] struggle, so you could know best how to love and serve them."

The thought fluttered through my mind and in that moment emotions that had raged for weeks in my troubled heart settled just long enough that I could feel with clarity the purpose behind the chaos.

You needed to know the depth of the struggle, so you can know how to serve them...my answer.

I feel exhausted, but I feel more courage than I've felt in a very long time, to continue trying and that these experiences haven't been in vain.

But I still hate piñatas.

Christmas is hard.

Christmas is a hard one for me... I feel like I run an emotional marathon all of December  trying to convince my heart it should be merry and bright. But try as I might,  joys and sorrows, past and present collide and I'm not sure what I feel, but it's not exactly merry....

Weeks ago I asked Kelli if she had any Christmas pictures from our years as young kids in California, after I couldn't find any in my stuff here....

She found three.  Dad and her; and Kelli and a Smurf (I'm guessing 1981or 82). Me and my Cabbage Patch Astronaut. (1986, maybe).... 

  

 

It's odd to me these are the only Christmas pictures of us... I'm sad that there aren't any Christmas pictures of us as a family....mom, dad, twin daughters, you know, together...I actually only know of two of those pictures in existence....us in Easter dresses at about 3 or 4 years old, sitting on my parents laps and a snapshot twenty years later at Kelli's BYU grad. 

There are happy Christmas memories.....Dad would often bring out his guitar and play Christmas carols and mom spent most of December practicing endless Christmas hymns for special school programs and church services  and Santa always brought us absolutely everything on our lists, every year.

We never spent a Christmas all together after we were nine. 

We lost mom in our twenties and my Dad in our thirties. They had so few Christmases as parents and grandparents. 

Christmas time is when most memories come flooding back of my parents and Christmas is strangely when I miss them the most.

My kids make Christmas joyous and irreverent and bright and hilarious and there are so many happy traditions we now share....but I also mourn a little at Christmas, wishing my parents could still be here and maybe that things could have been just a little different...together maybe.