When you picture your Christmas holiday, what does it look like? Who all is there? What do you do?

Does it smell like a roasting fireplace? or fresh baked cookies?

Are people smiling? Laughing?

What is your favorite thing to do?

Now that you have a good picture in your head, what do you do when someone you love... is no longer there to share it with you...?

This Christmas will be unlike any other for me personally.

I won't get to go to my Meme and Pawpaw's house and get hit with the scent of fresh chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven as soon as I walk through the door.

I won't have help putting the snow on the Christmas village.

I won't have my Meme...

Christmas is still a wonderful time of year. And it is still a blessing to have family and friends come together to celebrate the birth of Christ. But what do you do when you realize that not everyone is going to be there. That your holiday is one smile short.

I know everyone deals with grief differently and so if you have lost someone you may not think or do the same things as me. But this Christmas season has been the hardest one yet.

The hardest part for me isn't that the Christmas Village won't be put up, or that I don't get any of her cookies (which trust me if you had her cookies.. that's saying something). It's all the moments that I shared with her that I didn't realize I won't ever get to have again.

It's heartbreaking. It can even be suffocating to know that you have lost them.

Its the moments when I am putting up my ornaments and see one she gave me because it made her think of me.

It's the moments that you could never picture without them... but now you have to...

And its in those moments that you are reminded that they are actually gone...

So what do you do?

Well first I picture my Meme rolling her eyes at the fact I would even think about her this much, and even talk about her to people. She wasn't much for attention.

But you have to know that they are here with us. You have to cherish those memories that you had. Don't forget them, or hate the fact that they only memories now. They don't deserve to have their memory shamed.

And personally I know my Meme loved Christmas (besides having to take down all the decorations afterwards). But she loved Christmas because that's when family comes together. She loved her family and she loved people.

Picture the person that you may be missing this Christmas....

What did they like about Christmas....what memories do y'all have?

Those memories are beautiful...And being without them is hard...

Its like Christmas is incomplete... or that it may never be what it used to be. And your right. There is something missing, and your holiday will change. But you know them, and you know they would never want you to be sad, especially around a time of such Joy.

Thank God for the memories and times you had together. And maybe find a new way to honor the one your missing at Christmas.

If anything, know that it is okay to be sad and it is okay to miss them. But know that the times you had were special and nothing can change that. And know that God is taking good care of them, and that they are looking over you wishing you a very Merry Christmas.

Love and Lolipops <3