This time of year carries memories,
but not the kind wrapped in bows or rehearsed nostalgia.
They come quietly.
They rise with steam from the stove,
with the slow hum of the oven,
with the sound of weather reports stretching across state lines,
announcing that the tribe would not gather this year.
So the table was smaller.
Five plates.
Enough, still.
As I cooked a couple of Cornish hens, I caught the juices as they slipped and pooled,
golden and overlooked,
and my husband asked why I was saving them.
I told him the Midwest taught me that.
That what drips off, what seems like excess,
what looks like wasteâ
can be transformed.
With heat.
With patience.
With intention.
It becomes gravy.
My twenties in the Midwest was the first time I truly saw what Christmas looked likeânot the spectacle, not the fantasy, but the ordinary moment of people gathering without fear. Tradition without tension. Laughter without consequence. Warmth that didnât have to be earned.
Growing up, celebration wasnât permitted.
It was punished.
Birthdays to be ignored.
Joy was suspicious.
Laughter was a threat.
Happiness came with a price tag of guilt and shame.
Even the thought of it carried consequences.
I donât say this to be pitied.
I say it as testimony.
Of distance.
Of healing.
Of how the past, once sharp enough to draw blood, now canât reach me from ten feet away.
For that, I thank God.
While others were being shaped by expectationsâ
holiday schedules, family photos, predictable rhythmsâ
I was being trained to brace myself.
To expect rupture.
To prepare for nights that asked too much of a child
Tear soaked pillows that stuck to your face
and mornings that didnât promise safety.
Survival was the lesson.
Endurance the inheritance.
And then came the culture shock.
Not crossing borders as refugees, but realizing I had always lived between them.
One world still trembling with the aftershocks of war, genocide, and unspoken grief. Trauma passed down like heirlooms. Habits formed in fear, not malice.
Another world calling itself free, asking me to assimilate quietly, politely, completely
Before one's family could even heal.
How do you honor your elders
without erasing yourself?
How do you carry history
without letting it crush your spine?
How do you belong to two worlds
without disappearing into either?
Growing up is already hard.
The human condition.
Adding that weight felt unbearable some days.
What carried me through was art.
Poetry that whispered when I couldnât speak.
Drawings that let shadows exist on paper instead of inside my chest.
Words scribbled on napkins, notebooks, margins, scrapsâ
whatever was closest before the feelings overflowed.
They were bandages.
Small, necessary ones.
For the world didn't deserve for me to bleed on them.
Self disappointment always at the fringes,
threatening to pull you over the ledge.
When silence was demanded, creation became my refuge.
When expression was punished, imagination became my quiet defiance.
I never planned to be an author.
I was just trying to breathe.
Library trips were weaponized,
the metaphorical chains I chose to stay under
for the mere taste of being able to dissociate
to travel to other worlds while mine burned around me.
Butterfly effects in gilded cages.
The world would never believe
and so the inward collapse was the only thing that could be
the only thing that made logical sense
in a reality that had lost its color
except for red as it ran down my wrists and into the drain.
Life, circumstances, threats to end breath took me from place to place.
State to state.
The world still grey with hints of red.
As everything continued with new faces,
but still bled.
And somewhere along the way,
God rerouted me home much to my dismay.
Courses unknown to me,
Found too late, stumbled in to see
a mother finally drowning in her own tears
because she dared set herself free.
But life was never meant to be simpleâbut a puzzle.
One where if you didn't look hard enough, pieces would go missing.
Empty slots, plot holes and frustrations.
Until things fall apart again.
Until the collateral became me.
Yet things work out the way it should
even if one cannot see it.
After all, it led me here.
And somehow, in the surrenderâ
in trusting God with the parts of me I couldnât name,
couldnât fix,
couldnât untangleâ
the path began to clear.
The brambles loosened.
The jagged lines softened.
What once looked like scars
slowly revealed themselves as straight roads.
So there I stood, calmly making Christmas dinner.
Stirring gravy made from what was once discarded.
And my life passed before my eyesâ
not because death was near,
but because life was.
Waiting.
Steady.
Open-armed.
And I understood something then:
Change is not always loss.
Sometimes it is mercy in disguise.
Sometimes it is God saying,
âSee? Even this can be made new.â
He saved me with gentleness even when I didn't know who He was.
So I end with a quiet prayerâ
May we trust the transformations we donât yet understand.
May we believe that what drips away is not wasted.
May we remember that God specializes in making something sustaining
from what the world overlooks.
âBehold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forthâdo you not perceive it?â
May we perceive it.
May we welcome it.
And may we learn that change,
even when it comes unannounced,
is not always something to fearâ
but often an invitation
to finally come home.
-YD
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