Surviving COVID Christmas

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Welcome to The Masculine Journey. We are in our pre-Christmas, the last show before Christmas. Robby, how many Eves do we have, do you know? Six. Six Eves? Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve. Yeah, the six faces of Eve. There's three faces of Eve, I think. There might have been six.

We have two. Yeah, but six more days until Christmas. Only five shopping days, technically. Technically.

That would be if you could go shopping. That's true, depending on where you're at. Which has to do with today's topic. It does because, you know, typically on Christmas we will try to do in some years a surviving Christmas kind of thing. In one year we did surviving the dysfunctional family Christmas because we all come from a dysfunctional family.

It may not be your immediate ring, but a few rings out you're going to have some dysfunction. I'm sure there's probably most of it in the immediate ring for most of the families. All the families I've ever met have had it. You know, and if they didn't, they were lying.

But yeah, they do have it. And so we did that one. Robby and I had both lost our mom. We have different moms.

I didn't say that very clearly. We both lost our mothers, his mother and my mother in the same year. We're not brothers.

Yes, you are. But, you know, we did surviving loss at Christmas. And so this year the topic kind of came up surviving the COVID Christmas because we're all experiencing a different type of Christmas than we ever had before.

Would anybody disagree that this is a different season than what we've seen in our lifetime? And Harold, that may not be the case. You know, I don't know what's going to be bonnet. It's not fair to talk about it.

You can't reach a microphone. Is that a short joke, Jim? Yes.

No, but it is such a different year. And depending on where you live, there's different rules that are in place. Right? You can only have so many people, you can only be out for certain hours.

Right? Maybe you can't even go shopping where you're listening. You know, that maybe that's not an option.

You know, you can't have family get together to get get together. And so that becomes All right, porky. That's that's right.

You do have the same. Well played. So surviving a COVID Christmas because it's coming at and it's trying to steal your Christmas joy. In this year, I don't know about you guys. Joy has been very challenged this year. You guys can talk.

You have a microphone? You know, everybody has expectations, right, of what it's going to be. But it's been interesting to me. I in my neighborhood, I have never seen so many decorations. I mean, they're bigger and better than ever. And even my neighbor that usually is a little bit Grinchy. You know, he's come on strong. He's got deer in his yard and everything. Wow.

And you haven't shot them? But anyway, no, I but I think people are looking for it in different ways because they realize that some of the stuff is not going to be what it has been. This year is different, but my wife and I are really possibly experiencing our best year ever.

And it really is more a matter of expectations or lack thereof that we accept what God's giving us. And it's been a fruitful year. It's been an exciting one.

Thanksgiving was wonderful because the family that is not dysfunctional or less dysfunctional got together while the dysfunctional ones stayed with each other and wore their masks with two sisters. So, you know, that we had people of like bind together for Thanksgiving instead of the usual fight. And I think that will happen for Christmas. And it's going to be a challenge, I think. You know, I mean, for some people, it may be more business as usual. For others, it won't.

But I do know that it's not going to be the same as it normally has been. And when I was thinking about COVID and thinking about what Christmas movie could we play of something trying to steal Christmas? Obviously, the Grinch comes in.

And so what this is, is you have the Grinch hatching a plan to steal Christmas. You know, in his mind, he's been wronged by the Whos. You haven't seen the movie, really.

I mean, it's like way old. Who? Exactly. He's been wronged in his mind by the Whos. And anyway, so he's going to go steal their Christmas.

And so he's hatching a plan to do that. The Whos live in Whoville. Go figure.

Right down the street. It has to do with the Whovilation. It does. It's a great Whovilation. So let's go ahead and listen to it. And the more the Grinch thought of what Christmas would bring, the more the Grinch thought. I must stop this whole thing. Like a year after year, I've put up with it now.

I must stop this Christmas from coming. Like how? I mean, in what way? Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea.

I know just what to do. All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air. All the Whos were all dreaming, sweet dreams without care, when he came to the first little house on the square. Welcome to Whoville, Max. Come on, Max.

It's our first stop. The old Grinchy Claus hissed, and he climbed to the roof with empty bags in his fist. He'd slide down the chimney, a rather tight pinch. But if Santa could do it, then so could the Grinch. He's planning a double-twisting, interrupted fork, flying two and a half with a combo tuck and pike.

High degree of difficulty. He got stuck only once for a moment or two. Blasted water weight goes right to my hips. Then he stuck his head out of the fireplace flue. The stockings he grinned are the first thing to go. That seemed a lot longer than two minutes. It really did. It seemed like we watched the whole movie there.

Yeah, we did. Yeah, but that was just right at two minutes. But it's a piece together of the Grinch planning to steal Christmas. And the first thing he does is he steals the stockings. And then he steals the Christmas tree and the food out of the refrigerator and all the presents and everything. And he believes that if he steals all their stuff, he's going to take away their Christmas from them. And they're not going to have it.

And as I think about this whole COVID thing, depending again on where you live, if we were to follow in North Carolina the protocol, you know, if we're around anyone other than an immediate family member, we always have to have a mask on. Right? You can't have more than 10 people. And I'm deeply concerned about Santa because usually he comes after 10. Yeah. And there's a, you know, he's going to get caught. Yeah. He sees you when you're out late. Yeah, he sees you when you're out late. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And that's, you know, you can't be out after 10, right? And so, you know, you've got to end whatever time that you have with somebody early. And so, again, constriction, it could steal some joy. And for some people, they won't go see family.

You know, I have some distant family that won't get together with anyone, you know, because they're afraid that they're going to think. And people are just dealing in a different season. Well, it's possibly too late, but I think Santa has to get a test before he can fly. Is that not true?

Get a negative result? I'm sure. You know, this guy going from house to house.

Three in a row. Okay. You know, he better be carrying plenty of disinfectant. Yeah.

And not get stuck in the chimney. Yeah. I'm stuck not traveling. Yeah. I already had plans to travel that everybody's now canceled. So I got to rearrange and go some other time.

Yeah. And that's happened to a lot of people. I know that they've had that happen. They've had certain family members pull out of the equation, you know, that are like, okay, I'm out. I'm tapping out.

I'm not going to be part of it. You know, obviously concerns of, you know, can I travel? What's the rules in the different states? Right.

Right. You were going to go to Illinois. You know, what's it look like on the states getting there once I get there? You know, you have some states that their rule is that when you come into the state, you got to quarantine for 14 days before you can go anywhere. And that was California was doing that last I knew.

And so it was New York. I don't know if they still are. I don't follow what they do, but again, there's every area is different. Right.

And so you may not even be feasible for you to go do what you wanted to do. Yeah. Chaos may not be able to, but it sure seems like it's trying, you know, back to Alan's book. Yeah. It has been a very chaotic year. I guess one of the questions I would ask you guys is what are you going to do this year if you can't do your normal plans, but what are you going to do to not let the Christmas joy be stolen from you? No, honestly, for me, one of the things that you want me to switch is I'm going to green.

Okay. And I like this one, if I'm not careful, just what's going on between COVID and the election steals my joy almost every day, right? There's so much going on there that if you pin your hopes on the wrong stuff, you know, it's really, really scary. And it's interesting to me that I, you know, I have all this wonderful quiet time and I get myself in a great position and, you know, within an hour or two of what I see going on in the world, you know, it's tough to hang onto. And so what I'm going to do is do my best to, you know, take my word for the year and try to get intimate with God and try to feel like I'm close in His presence.

I would have to say that we're not doing all so hot. But you know, which is interesting because when you do get around your immediate family, which I'm very, very fortunate because, you know, my kids are all of the mind that we're going to get together and we're going to do what we do for Christmas. But when your life's been sucked out of you by other things, you tend to be a little grinchy. And so it's a real difficult thing from my perspective to keep my hope pinned on where it's supposed to be, knowing that God's really got it, but you know where we're at.

Yeah, that's not the easiest thing in the world. You've got so many people doing different things, saying different things, all kinds of stuff that can distract you. Again, if you've been distracted during this year, I think it's going to be ramped up for Christmas. If you've gone through it, like Jim has just said, hey, you know, we're trusting in God, I've been content, everything's going okay, you know, no, nothing real big, I think you're going to probably, you know, come through the Christmas season just fine. But it's, you're going to have to pick a side and go with it.

And typically, you're going to go where you've been going for the rest, because the whole year has been this way. Yeah, and when we come back, we're going to, one of the words you used, Robby, was the world. And we're going to talk about that world aspect of it and not to put your faith there. But we do have a special bump in coming in from Jim.

He did a song, this is just the chorus, we're going to talk more about it. But listen to this bump in when we come back. Now what do we do? Just be yourselves.

Where are you going? We're going to pick a fight. If it feels like every day is picking a fight, then you might want to come listen to The Masculine Journey and find out why we use clips like these to illustrate the story God is telling in the lives of men today. The truth is God designed you to pick a fight.

But which fights do we pick? Well, grab your gear and come on a quest every Saturday at noon, and now The Masculine Journey After Hours Podcast, Masculine Journey Radio. Hi, this is Sam with Masculine Journey.

I'm here with my son Eli. We're going to talk about ways that you can help support the ministry. One way, you can go to smile.amazon.com, go to smile.amazon.com. There's information on our website there on how to do that.

You go to facebook.com and click the donate button, or you can go to masculinejourney.org and find the donate button, masculinejourney.org, or if you want to mail something in, mail it to P.O. Box 550, Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. Grandma got COVID-19 for Christmas, coming home from shopping Christmas Eve. You may think there's no such thing as COVID, but as for me and Grandpa, we believe. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas. This is a tremendous song. I know Jim would never say that, but this is a tremendous song that Jim put together.

He wrote it. Yeah, obviously it's a parody of Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer, but we were initially going to play the whole thing, but in part of the whole thing, just like the regular movie- The Grinch stole it. The regular song, not movie, I keep thinking movies. The regular song, Grandma doesn't make it, right?

And so we were a little worried that people who had lost somebody due to COVID or knew somebody that had died to that would be impacted, and we didn't want to negatively do that. It is a wonderful song. It's really well done. Jim, you did an amazing job, and we're going to have it at our website, maskandjourney.org.

You can go listen to it there. And Andy, go ahead and call me the name that you call me. No, no. Well, I'm not going to use this, Mike.

Oh, good. You can't talk. Well, I could talk while we're trying to get Andy to a mic, and it was written from a humorous standpoint, but there's some really serious things in it. And part of what we want to look at is, you know, what are we taking seriously now? And is it worldly or is it godly? And I really wanted to, I want people to listen to it, be prepared to be hurt, insulted, offended.

That's the word I was looking for. But it shouldn't because it really is looking at this from a, you know, it's not like grandma was going to get out of it alive anyway. And that is very sad if you've had that experience. But for me, at least, I've had a much sadder experience dealing with the other side of COVID. A friend of mine and I, who's an elder in our church, were talking the other day that we have seen, he's seen two people he knew die from COVID.

One of them I shared with him, and he used to be an elder at our church. And he really, if he died from COVID, he did, he was positive, and he was elderly and sick. But what really, one of the things that was said is he died of a broken heart because his wife was in the hospital, and they had been together 60 years, and he could not go see her. And when he contracted it, he had no will to live. But what we came down to with this is we have seen more suicides than we've seen COVID deaths.

And Friday at our church, we had three funerals, two of them were young people killing themselves. There's the buzzkill. Darrell Bock Yeah, which I just wanted to mention that what you heard was just the chorus. The whole song is going to be available at masculinejourney.org, where you can hear the verses that he penned, which, you know, I gotta admit, they're wonderfully mixed by an outstanding producer. Who would that be? But anyway, yeah, it's going to be worth taking a listen to if, you know, you can go with the comedy. It's fun. Scott Horner Yeah, and when you talk about being offended, I mean, the worst thing that happens is Grandma dies.

I mean, it's not like there's anything offensive. Darrell Bock Just like in the original? Scott Horner Yeah, just like in the original. You know, and I think Porky Pig Productions would be a great name for productions. You know, you could do that.

That would be great. But back to something you said before the break, Robby, was, you know, about the world. You know, and when you really think about it, the world has taken Christmas from God for so many years, right?

You know, I'm not going to be little Santa Claus or anything like that. That's not what I'm going after, but the direction, the focus, the attention is taken completely away from what is a Christian holiday that celebrated the birth of Christ. Now, obviously, it didn't happen at that time of year.

I don't believe it was at a different time of year, but that's when we celebrate it, right? And so the focus of the world's long been taken off of that. And I think a lot of it, you know, the answer comes of focusing our attention back on Him, right? That's where the answer lies for us. And so we're going to go ahead and go to a clip from Miracle on 34th Street, and it has Santa Claus, but it also has God in it.

So why don't we listen to it, and then we'll come back and talk about it. Merry Christmas. I'm not going to be needing that. The young lady who just approached the bench presented me with this Christmas card and this. It's a $1 bill.

It's going to be returned shortly. But by presenting me with this bill, she reminded me of the fact that it's issued by the Treasury of the United States of America. And it's backed by the government and the people of the United States of America. Upon inspection of the article, you will see the words, In God We Trust.

Now, we're not here to prove that God exists, but we are here to prove that a being just as invisible and yet just as present exists. Federal government puts its trust in God. It does so on faith and faith alone. It's the will of the people that guides the government. And it is and was their collective faith in a greater being that gave and gives cause to the inscription on this bill.

Now, if the government of the United States can issue its currency bearing a declaration of trust in God without demanding physical evidence of the existence or the non-existence of a greater being, then the state of New York, by a similar demonstration of the collective faith of its people, can accept and acknowledge that Santa Claus does exist, and he exists in the version of Christmas. When you listen to that clip, you know, for me anyway, it's all about perspective. You know, if you've watched that movie, there's several different versions of it.

This one happened to use the dollar bill, another one uses letters from the post office, but it's all kind of the same thing. And the reason I like this version was because it really dealt with that, in God we trust portion of it, but it's perspective. When we think about things a certain way, we change how we feel about it, right? And a lot of what getting through this Christmas is going to be is changing our focus, right? That, okay, maybe you can't go visit Aunt Sally and you really wanted to go visit her, you know, because she's not taking visitors now. Okay, what can you go do? What can you do differently?

What can you put in its place? My boys and I were talking about it as we were together this weekend about maybe this year we'll do something different. As long as the weather allows, we're going to do a fire ring outside, you know, a little fire pit, right? And we're just going to do a Christmas fire pit and make a different type of meal than we ever have and celebrate a little differently and just try to do something that's completely abnormal for us so that we can say, okay, we're going to enter into this with a fun attitude even though we can't go do some of the stuff we'd like to go do. So Rodney, what about you? What are you going to do?

You can't go to Illinois. Well, again, that would be actually abnormal. That would be changing something, doing something different because I haven't been back there in a while and haven't been there for Christmas and even longer. So for me, excuse me, it's more of don't change your focus. My focus has been on God and that's where it's supposed to be and for me it's don't let COVID interfere.

Don't let all the other people that are doing whatever, saying whatever, changing the rules and laws of what we can even do day to day now, don't let that interfere. Keep that out. Keep your focus. I'm, you know, like Robby said, you know, you turn on the radio, you start listening to the worldly things of news and things of that nature, it's going to get to you quickly. I'm preferring to keep most of that out.

I get enough of it because if you, I'm still going to work. So I get around everybody and everybody's talking about whatever they heard or saw and I get secondhand stuff and I'm like, that's enough, you know, I don't need all that. So I stay away from the inundation of the news and the feeds and all that kind of information.

I'm on zero social media. I stay away from any of that stuff. So the only thing I do have is for me is CNBC updates for financial stuff, which gets enough of the political in it. But it's like, you read three lines and you're, that's good.

I go on. And your 10 other favorite podcasts. Well, the podcasts are very, very, very good. And they're very good to listen to when you're listening to Christian broadcast for the most part, very little secular stuff. And it's just great. It does.

But you're, you're right, the podcasts are a great part of keeping my heart in the game and not tuning out. And especially at this time of year, yeah, it has the opportunity. And one thing I want to do make clear, we're not, we're not saying you should go out and not be safe in this COVID environment. I mean, we have hand sanitizer that we all have. We wear the face mask. We do the things that we're supposed to do, but you don't have to let it rob you of your joy.

That's the point, Andy, do you want to say something? Uh, no, I'm going to put my mask on when you were told my mask now, um, it is going to be a different, uh, I had a different Thanksgiving. It was first time I hadn't spent it with my mom and my daughter together, and actually it ended up being my, my daughter and my wife, but you know, Christmas, my mom still doesn't feel comfortable with that, which is difficult because when you've done that, you've done it every year for, and so many people are in that place.

And I don't really don't know what Christmas is going to be, look like to be honest with you. Um, but I, you know, I was thinking about this year and I was thinking about COVID and you know, I think this year some, sometimes when you, when you really sit back and look at what COVID has done, I feel like it's in some way a way of really humbling humanity. We always have all the answers and this is one of the first things that really is changed by surprise and in that humility, I feel like it really is one of those things where regardless how it came about, God, I think is wanting to get our attention and um, to the point, you know, I think we, we have taken to your point, you were talking about, we've put it on Santa Claus or the celebration or even the family can become more of an important to part of the celebration than Christ himself.

And I hope that we all truly do that. I don't want to be, you can be religious and be in trying to be holy and talk about, we forgot about things, but I really, I really think the focus, I mean, God, this is what's going on this year. This has been a crazy year. You've gotten me through it.

I'm thankful that you have, but I'm going to really trust you during this season and truly celebrate that you sent your son, you know, to this earth for our salvation. Wow. That was almost a Linus peanuts moment. That was no, that was awesome.

Andy and thank you. That is where the focus needs to be. And we have so much more we want to talk about in the, uh, after hours and we have a clip from the crossing. I've never seen that movie, which I haven't.

I don't think most of us have here. It's got a great clip coming up and we may have a revisit from the Grinch to see how his story ended. You know, if you haven't seen that movie, I don't know why, but go to masculine journey.org. Listen to Jim's new song. It's awesome. Go listen to it. Masculine journey.org. It'll be on the front page, Robby's going to have it there for you. We'll see you next week and we'll look forward to talking to you. This is the truth network.