{"id":970,"date":"2013-12-27T02:17:22","date_gmt":"2013-12-27T02:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/?p=970"},"modified":"2013-12-27T02:17:22","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T02:17:22","slug":"please-remember-you-cannot-fail-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/2013\/12\/please-remember-you-cannot-fail-christmas.html","title":{"rendered":"Please remember, you cannot fail Christmas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Maureen<\/a>It’s a couple of days after the holiday, a couple of days after we sang Noel and celebrated the birth of Our Lord. And, perhaps, as the leftovers are settled and the wrapping is dispatched, you might begin to feel critical of yourself. Perhaps you didn’t feel physically as well as you wanted to. Maybe you had a medical emergency, and ended up “celebrating” in the OR, uprooting your family and their holiday in the process. Or, maybe, in the emotion of the moment at dinner or on the way home from church, you snapped at someone or wept for “no apparent reason.”<\/p>\n

Maybe right now, you’re thinking \u00a0that the holiday was ruined, and you had something to do with it…or you caused it to be so.<\/p>\n

Now, before you let those ideas take up residence in your heart, before you sink too low from the thought of a Christmas that didn’t go quite as you’d hoped or planned, please know…<\/p>\n

You cannot fail Christmas!<\/p>\n

There is no teacher grading you on how well you cooked a turkey, nor is there a time-keeper maintaining an hourly account of how much time you were able to spend at the family gathering and how much time you had to spend tending to your chronic health problems. No, Our Lord looks into our hearts and sees our pain. He knows our struggles, and He understands our fears and frustrations. And through it all, no matter what, He loves us.<\/p>\n

God didn’t send us Christmas as some kind of herculean test, designed to make us exhausted and disappointed for days afterward. And, he didn’t mean for us to lament our failing to travel, buy expensive presents, or participate fully in all the holiday festivities.<\/p>\n

God sent us Christmas so we could celebrate the birth of His only Son, Jesus Christ. So we could rejoice at His love, and bask in His comfort and peace.<\/p>\n

With love like this, with a gift like this, we have to know, deep down, that we can never fail Christmas – because God, and Christmas, never fails us!<\/p>\n

Blessings for the day,<\/p>\n

Maureen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a couple of days after the holiday, a couple of days after we sang Noel and celebrated the birth of Our Lord. And, perhaps, as the leftovers are settled and the wrapping is dispatched, you might begin to feel critical of yourself. Perhaps you didn’t feel physically as well as you wanted to. 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She expected to be writing scripts. God had other plans. A few years after her graduation, Maureen was diagnosed with a life-threatening case of organ-involved lupus. Her life turned upside down as she grappled with the effects of the illness and other health conditions that ensued. She was no stranger to serious health challenges; even as a child, Maureen had survived numerous bouts of pneumonia, flu, and other infections. But lupus made her take a fresh look at her life goals - and took herlifelong, strong Catholic Christian faith and writing in a direction she'd never imagined. Today, Maureen writes and speaks about walking with the Lord while living with chronic pain and illness. Her most recent book is \"Don't Panic!: How to Keep Going When the Going Gets Tough (Franciscan Media). She is also the author of, \"Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain & Illness\" (Image Books\/Randomhouse), \"Beyond Pain: Job, Jesus, and Joy\" (Twenty-Third Publications), \"The First Year: Hypothyroidism, Second Edition\" (Perseus) and \"Taking Charge of Lupus: How to Manage the Disease and Make the Most of Your LIfe.\" She writes the syndicated column, \"Living Well,\" for Catholic News Service, and has also written for Saint Anthony Messenger Magazine, Journey for Women Magazine, The Upper Room Magazine, LupusNow, and Arthritis Today. Maureen's health continues to be a challenge, however she feels honored to be able to bring her perspective, from experience and knowledge, to others. \"Good Days...Bad Days with Maureen Pratt\" is a new way for Maureen to reach people who carry the burden of illness and pain in their lives, or who care for someone who does. Through the blog, she hopes to bring issues of health, wellness, and spirit into focus and, especially, inspire others that, no matter what health challenges, illness, or hardships they endure, each person can find a good way to realize the wonderful potential God has placed within each heart and soul.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.maureenpratt.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/author\/mpratt"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/548"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":971,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}