Parts of my life today are the same as the girl from the Santa missions.  I’m still curious.  If given the opportunity I still dance with wild abandon.  I still love music.  My brother, my sister, the closeness we had then, still remains.  But much is different.  I don’t speak to my father as often as I should.  It’s difficult to even try.  Many of those images, those times that forged me, the items in that trunk, are of a life that is as foreign to me now as are scenes in a movie.  So my gift this year, the culmination of years of Operation Christmas Eve, was to see those images of my life, to feel emotions I had forgotten, all from this surprise “time capsule” that I unknowingly made by putting things I would forget I even had into boxes and then into a trunk, not to be removed until decades later, at a time when I would see and feel so much darkness, a time when I would really need them.  Turns out the girl who started collecting these things, the girl in the photo wearing her outrageous black lace princess outfit and singing with her dad, a photo I was not to find until I had touched, seen and felt every article in the trunk, little six-year-old me, would give grown-up me a present, indeed the answer to Operation Christmas Eve.  And her present, the point of Operation Christmas Eve, would remind me that it’s not all about the struggle; her present would remind me of triumph, my own triumphs, remind me that times change, and most importantly, remind me what makes me special.  Very simply, what she understood in way that only a child on Christmas knows, what makes me special, is love — love for others, love received, love forgotten, love to come.

I think that’s what Christmas is all about.  It’s not about presents.  It’s not about decorations.  It’s not about dinner.  It’s about love, and celebrating those we love with those we love, even if those people are far away.  And that love makes us ALL special.

With that, my gift to each of you is simply that… love.  I love that you all visit here.  I love this place.  I love each and every one of you and that you give so much of yourselves with your stories of the times, places and people who, in turn, touch and have touched your hearts.  Thank you for everything.  Thank you for your undying support.  Thank you for being my friends.  Thank you for letting me feel six years old.  Thank you for letting me be Whispergirl.  Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all you special people!