Overflow.

There’s much said about the hustle and bustle and busy, frenetic energy that abounds this time of year. Holiday parties, friends and co-workers and Secret Santas occupy our days and nights. Fractured family trees, branches scattered across the county lines, are all trying to reconnect. Christmas cards with faces of love on them fill the mail box. Snowmen that sparkle in the night and twinkle lights outline homes on streets in cities, giving off a nice warm glow. It’s magical.

But there is also something to be said about the quiet, murky loneliness that can creep up, seep in, suffocate. It’s not dressed in a bright red suit, but it’s there. Palpable. With the strength of day old coffee, it enters your bloodstream. Crawls under the covers and lies with you, lies on you, weighty, solid.

It’s not a John Hughes angst, per se. It’s subtle. Simple things like the whispered wish for a reason to hang Christmas stockings next year, or the desire for a Facebook status that includes hearts, or just the sound of other voices living in the house…simple things like that can take on a life of their own this time of year.

It’s hard.

It’s hard to juggle the joy and love during a time of year that will, without fail, peel the scab off of a wound long thought healed.

Blessings come, however, in all shapes and sizes. With the words of friends still unmet, there is understanding. With immediate offers of love and laughter and pizza and wine, there is support, unending, without judgement. Tables full of faces known for years, for months, for minutes bring back the warmth and reaffirm that life is full of light.  Laughter. Unending, tears, screams, pearl clutching seizures of laughter…it’s better than a gilded sword of battle. It fights off the lonely. It fills up the empty.

I am overflowing. My heart, with all of it’s scar tissue and scabs and empty wishes…is full.

I hope your holiday weekend is full of warmth, full of light, and that you’re filled with enough love to fight back, stand firm and believe in a little magic.