Sunday’s sunrise looked just like that epic one from weeks ago—same impossible oranges, same fire painted across the water. Only I was different. This time, Tony sat beside me. This time, I wasn’t anticipating disaster but processing triumph. This time, the glory wasn’t something I couldn’t grasp—it was reflecting what had already happened in my home.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat at this same pier, surrounded by tangerine fire I could see but not keep, dreading the Thanksgiving I was about to host. I wrote about learning to receive what comes instead of demanding my mother’s perfect template, about showing up with empty hands.

I just didn’t expect it to work.

I’d written those words about surrender, but apparently, I hadn’t fully believed them. God had to show me, had to prove that when I finally stepped back from the conductor’s podium, He could orchestrate something more beautiful than my rigid score ever allowed.

The Thanksgiving That Actually Was

Thursday came, and somehow, everything went amazingly. Tony, Cali, and I prepped as a family. For the first time, Tony’s family respected me as hostess—no one commandeered my kitchen, no one arrived with surprise dishes that competed with the menu. The paper plates and aluminum foil I’d dreaded? They caught candlelight just fine. The orderly gratitude circle I’d mourned? It transformed into laughter bubbling up in two languages, stories overlapping, and joy that didn’t need orchestration.

I had let go… and grace had rushed in to fill my empty hands.

This is what I’d missed all those years watching my mother’s perfect Thanksgivings: she wasn’t the conductor. She was following God’s lead, and that’s why it looked effortless. Her Agape corner where she had her morning devotionals wasn’t where she planned—it was where she surrendered the plan.

The Weekend of Yes

Friday, we drove to Williamsburg as a family, walking rows of evergreens until we found our eight-foot Fraser fir. Saturday, Cali set up the Christmas village—what had always been my domain—and I watched her arrange each piece with the same care I once had. Tony hung his Jack Skellington display in the corner of the porch. I don’t love it, but he does, and somehow it bothers me less each year.

By Sunday evening, our house twinkled with lights Tony had spent an hour hanging from a ladder. Inside: angels and nativity scenes, ornaments and the warming scent of cinnamon spice and sugar cookie wax melts. Outside: icicle lights and that quirky Skellington corner. In three days, we’d transformed our home with holiday spirit—not my mother’s, not his mother’s, but ours.

The Question in the Glow

Sunday morning, sitting beside Tony as the sky erupted in familiar fire, I felt the exhaustion beneath the triumph. We’d done it—created our own Thanksgiving, decorated our own home, found our own rhythm. Tony had even said something that stopped me mid-ornament: “I’m excited for days off work so we can spend time together.” That wasn’t true a month or two ago. God was restoring what my need for control had nearly broken.

And yet, the question hung between us in the sunrise glow: Where do we spend Christmas?

Three Doors, No Perfect Answer

Saturday night, between hanging lights and finalizing plans, the conversation with my parents had left me in tears. Dad doesn’t want drama. Mom insists they want us to come—I just need to promise not to fall apart this time, not to have a manic meltdown when I visit my childhood home in Syracuse. The house where my best Christmas memories live, where Mom creates the magic I’ve spent my adult life trying to recreate.

Tony’s response was protective and hurt: maybe we shouldn’t go where we’re not fully wanted. Maybe we should stay in a hotel. Maybe we should stay home.

Or maybe—door number three—we drive to Savannah, neutral territory, and create Christmas from scratch.

The Sunrise Knows Who’s in Charge

Sunday’s epic sunrise seemed to understand my dilemma. Here was the same spectacular show from weeks ago, but I was watching it from the other side of surrender. The colors painted themselves across the sky without my permission, without my planning, more beautiful than anything I could have orchestrated.

This is the lesson I keep having to learn: God is God, and I am not.

I’d released my mother’s Thanksgiving template and received something beautiful instead—but that wasn’t my doing. That was God, waiting for me to get out of His way. Every good thing that happened last week—Tony’s family respecting boundaries, Cali joyfully claiming the Christmas village, Tony wanting to spend time together—none of that was my orchestration. It was God’s, finally given room to work.

But Christmas in Syracuse? Those memories run deeper than Thanksgiving ever did. The perfect tree in the perfect spot. The china and sterling silver that actually got used. The way Mom makes everything magical, even now. Am I trying to recreate something that will never be as good as it was in childhood? Or am I afraid to find out it could be different and still beautiful?

After the Epic, Before the Next

Watching morning after morning at the pier, I know the sunrise doesn’t hold its most spectacular colors; it offers them freely, then releases them, trusting tomorrow will bring its own light, its own worries, its own answers to prayer. Sunday’s epic sunrise faded into an ordinary December morning, and Tony and I drove home to finish decorating.

I don’t know where we’ll spend Christmas. Syracuse, with its complicated invitation and precious memories. Home, where we’ve just proven we can make our own magic. Savannah, where no one’s expectations wait to be met or disappointed.

What I do know is this: three weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined Thanksgiving would work. I couldn’t have believed that letting go would feel like freedom instead of loss. I sat in that first epic sunrise, convinced I could see glory but not keep it.

Sunday’s sunrise taught me otherwise. The glory isn’t in the peak moment—it’s in showing up the morning after, and the morning after that. It’s in Tony on a ladder hanging lights. It’s in Cali arranging the Christmas village with teenage precision. It’s in my green bean casserole sitting proudly beside arroz con gandules, a culturally-infused Thanksgiving feast.

Maybe Christmas will teach me the same lesson Thanksgiving did: that the magic isn’t in the recreation but in the receiving. Whether that’s in Syracuse, Savannah, or right here at home, surrounded by twinkling lights and a curious Jack Skellington grinning from the porch.

The sunrise shall not halt. Epic or ordinary, alone or together, it will come. And I’ll be there to meet it, hands open in surrender and advance praise, heart ready for whatever colors God chooses to paint across my December sky.

Because ultimately, this holiday season can’t help but teach me another lesson at forty-two: giving up control isn’t losing something… it’s returning something that was never mine to hold. It’s letting God do what He’s always been trying to do, if I’d just stop insisting I know better.

The God who paints impossible sunrises, who transformed my dreaded Thanksgiving into triumph, who brought Tony and me back together when I thought we were breaking—this same God already knows where we’ll spend Christmas. He’s already preparing that ground, already orchestrating details I can’t see.

My job isn’t to conduct. It’s to show up, hands empty, heart open, ready to receive whatever He’s already planning. Because every time—every single time—that I’ve let God be God? He’s painted colors I couldn’t have imagined.

Epic or ordinary, Syracuse or Savannah, china or paper plates—He’s got this. He’s always had this. I just had to learn to let Him.