Welcome to the 12
Pearls of Christmas blog series!
Merry Christmas
from Pearl Girls™! We hope you enjoy
these Christmas “Pearls of Wisdom” from the authors who were so kind to donate
their time and talents! If you miss a few posts, you’ll be able go back through
and read them on this blog throughout the next few days.
We’re giving
away a pearl necklace in celebration of the holidays, as well as some items
(books, a gift pack, music CDs) from the contributors! Enter
now on Facebook or at the Pearl Girls
blog. The winner will announced on January 2, 2013 at
the Pearl Girls blog.
If you are
unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit www.pearlgirls.info and see what
we’re all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help
women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy
of Mother
of Pearl, Pearl
Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls products (all
GREAT gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.
***
A Mistletoe Medley
By Margaret
McSweeney
“You have breast
cancer.” Those four words my doctor said the week of Mother’s Day 2012
have forever changed my life. Mere months after my fiftieth birthday, I
encountered this unexpected “lump in the road” and ventured through a major
detour after reaching my half-century mark.
Through this
“grit,” God has covered me with His amazing grace! At the same time of my
diagnosis, two books released: Mother of Pearl: Luminous Lessons and
Iridescent Faith along with Aftermath: Growing in Grace
Through Grief. During this Christmas season, I rejoice that my cancer
was caught and treated at an early stage. After six weeks of “daily radiance”
(AKA radiation therapy), I started my daily dose of Tamoxifen to help battle
any potential cells that might cause a recurrence. Thank you for your continued
thoughts and prayers.
While
writing Aftermath and sharing my journey of grief as an adult
orphan, I experienced several “hugs from heaven” as I discovered family
letters, journals, and even a video in which my mother shares her faith. This
is a mistletoe medley from my mother’s heart:
Each Christmas
season my father used to go down into the woods behind our home and bring us
back some mistletoe. It was a present that my sister and I loved. We’d tie it
with bright ribbons and would hang it over several doorways in the house.
It was always
fun of course for a Christmas party, but it came to mean more than that to us.
It seemed to become a symbol of the meaning of Christmas: Love, God’s love for
the world that prompted Him to send Christ to become our Savior. Somehow it
seemed to enhance our love for each other as a family. And we found ourselves
stepping under the mistletoe to give someone a hug or to plant a kiss on
someone’s cheek and say, “I love you.”
I thought of
these mistletoe Christmases during my mother’s losing battle with cancer.
I penned my thoughts like this:
Illness, you ugly
parasite!
Like mistletoe,
you’ve entrenched yourself upon my body!
As you bloom and
grow, you feed upon my strength.
I shall fight!
Battalions stand
by to help!
My doctor’s
scalpel will sever you.
Modern medicine
will shrivel you.
You shall fall to
the ground,
And I shall stand
again strong and well.
But what if I
cannot conquer you?
If you are with
me still
As my constant,
inevitable companion,
I pray that God
will help me
Learn to live
with you in peace
And somehow
discover how you, my enemy—
Like mistletoe at
Christmas—
Can serve some
useful purpose
There are times
when we cannot rid our lives of things that hurt such as pain or grief, loss,
illness, sorrow. Sometimes they’re with us as our inevitable companions and we
must learn to make peace with them.
Those are the
times when we can ask God through Christ to help us transform the loneliness,
the pain, the grief, the loss-symbolically into something that can serve a
useful purpose in our lives.
May you feel an
extra “hug from heaven” this Christmas season from the loving arms of our
Heavenly Father. God is present, and He knows your name!
*Text quoted from
Aftermath (New Hope, 2012) by Margaret McSweeney, pp 114-115
**
Margaret
McSweeny is a well-published author and freelance writer for the 411 Voices and
the Daily Herald, the largest suburban Chicago newspaper. She is the author of
Aftermath, A Mother's Heart Knows and Go Back and Be Happy. She is also the
founder of Pearl Girls™ and the general editor of the Pearl Girls™ books;
Mother of Pearl and Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace. All
proceeds from the sales of the Pearl Girls™ books go to charity. For the past
five years, she has served on the board of directors for WINGS, an organization
that helps abused women and their children get a new start in
life. Margaret would love to meet you too. Follow her on twitter or friend her on facebook. You
can also keep up with Margaret atKitchen Chat or
the Pearl Girls blog. Margaret
lives with her husband and two daughters in the Chicago suburbs.
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