Spiraling Alone, Like a Kite Caught in the Wind

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I've been shopping a couple of times; to buy obligatory gifts for parties I have been required to attend and to search for appropriate gifts for people I truly love. It's no fun to shop this year. Money is tight; gifts are expensive; real needs are few. I've managed not to fall into the trap of spending money I don't have to spend. But tomorrow is Christmas Eve. There's a family get-together the next day and they will have presents for me. I don't have anything to take wrapped as a gift.
This is when I miss my husband most, I think. He was a Christmas Eve shopper. He loved to go out at the last minute and find a treasure for someone. Maybe I'll go out tomorrow and try again. But tonight, I'm spiraling alone, spinning around and around like an out-of-control kite caught in the wind with string not long enough to allow it to soar. Around and around I whirl, my head spinning. My thoughts are all tangled, like the tail on a twisting kite.
How did I get to this place? I was soaring along, paired with another who was also soaring, riding a fresh wind. Suddenly his string was clipped and he sailed out of sight, just like a kite I flew as a young child. Now, here I am, spiraling around, trying to untangle myself. I want to soar again, but
it's Christmas Eve again. I can't run away this year. Just thinking of family being together without my husband, their dad, their papaw . . . it makes me nauseous.
Usually I can count my blessings. And if I stop now to think, I can find many things and people for which I am grateful. But when I turn the lights out, there's no one there but me.
I'm living a crisis of faith. I want my life to have a foundation. I want God to be sovereign. I want to believe. Yet, just as I think the wind of the Holy Spirit has lifted me above all the doubts, I find myself caught in the dry dead branches of my faith, withered and old.
I wonder how long I will spin around like this. I'm dizzy with the circular motion, yet I haven't been pulled out of it yet.
Am I tying two themes together tonight? What do spiraling kites have to do with Christmas Eve and shopping and family parties? I'm not sure.
I was told this morning to expect doors to open before me and close behind me in the next few days. The old life has to come to an end. A new book needs to be written. Could it be there is a relationship between grief, shopping and kites?
Watching my husband leave, as it were, like a soaring kite, I was brought to the edge of a cliff. He's gone; I am spinning far below and behind him. It's time for me to stop fighting with the wind that took him away. I must learn how to fly alone; to shop alone with joy, hoping for a treasure for a dear person. And I must learn quickly, for tomorrow is Christmas Eve.