Christmas Conversation

I have been looking back at this blog and reflecting on some of what I wrote before I stopped writing a couple years ago. This Christmas Eve Conversation post is a painful reminder of a hard Christmas Season that I endured. As I reflect back on that painful time I think about all of the many, many people who are enduring something now, people who are in a hard place during this season of "joy". For many unique reasons the Christmas Season can be very difficult for an overwhelming number of us. Much like church life or Christian life many of us get trapped in the expectations of what a "good Christian", a "good community", or a "good Christmas" should be. We idealize what we & those around us need to create a blissfully happy (that is how we are supposed to feel, right?) Christmas.

But I believe there is a reason that Christmas can feel so difficult, I believe that reason is mysteriously captured in our church calendar during this season of Advent. The struggle, this longing is a deep seated need of all humanity for Him. And in this longing and struggle we tend to explore our brokenness... the ugliness in us surfaces, we bring it out in each other and we bicker, fight, growl... over money, gifts, shopping lists, clean houses, things not being "right"... because well, it really is NOT RIGHT. We are deeply and bitterly in NEED of a savior, deeply in need of redemption.

So we gather round, we tell the stories we all need to hear, we light candles to prove to ourselves that HE HAS COME, we sing songs to help us remember in that deep soulful place that music heals... THE REDEEMER HAS COME! And it is from that place that true JOY overflows. It is from that spot in creation's redemption that we recognize HE is WONDERFUL.

So here is a new CHRISTMAS CONVERSATION. 2 years post season of pain, post darkest days, post Christmas Eve conversation and the feelings of not wanting to join the celebration...

Christmas Conversation

Let me tell you the story

The one I didn't want to hear

Of the Son

Baby, angels, a star

Let it cast light on your darkness

Like traced silhouette

Yes, even now

Set your eyes, child, on that star

Look for it in the East

Like a beacon to follow when nothing else makes sense

Look for it and follow

Even blindly

How long?

As long as it takes

Sing now, the songs you don't feel like singing

Sing it even if mouthing the words

Like practice makes perfect

Your voice will arrive

And your voice will sing

'Redeemer!'

And it will not look anything like what you thought

Crouch there in the dark for a minute

I have been a little obsessed with the idea of the light coming. Everything I read, see, or have been listening to seems to be echoing a chant...

Please come, Light of the world!

Yet today, the Winter Solstice (darkest day of the year), that sea of thoughts on bringing the light fell into a drifting tide of darkened sadness.

It felt like I couldn't shake the sadness all day and so... I just let myself feel it.

Let me clarify what I mean by sadness because I know sometimes we are afraid to admit that we are sad. I do not mean I was depressed. I was inward reflecting but I was not imploding inward towards depression. Just feeling sad, which is an OK thing to feel.

Listen... just in case no one has ever told you...

It is OK to need. It is OK to want love. It is OK to be sad. It is OK to want more. It is OK to not know. It is OK to look and not see. It is OK to ask why. It is OK to sit and wonder what it will look like. It is OK to be afraid.

It is OK to feel like you are on the edge about to jump and that He is right there with you, saying "Trust Me! The light will come".

So... go ahead...

And that is when the fear comes... did you feel it just now in you, as you read.

Something pulling you from doing whatever that next jump into the darkness is?

If you felt it, you are alive. And that means you need to do it, whatever it is He is asking, all the more.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of the darkness. It is overwhelming.

Picture yourself in the darkest room... you hear a noise and your brain fills in the blank of the unknown with the bleakest picture of what it could be. Your brain is getting you ready to fight, hide, run, preparing you for the worst. That is what fear does & it is a cautious yet ultimately, usually, very foolish thing... Cue small cat or a ceiling fan swaying a piece of paper.

It is the things we can not see that scare us the most. Yet God always has us right there on the brink and never shows us. He asks us to trust Him and He asks us to go exactly where we are afraid to go.

But let me tell you, friends, Jump anyway! As you are poised here in the darkest night.

Because, let me tell you, He is faithful and He is good. His faithfulness will always overwhelm the doubt. His light will always illuminate even the darkest fear. It's a promise.

So what if you still are not certain.

The beautiful thing about the God I know is He will be faithful even in the smallest things.

You give Him the tiniest pin prick of a section of your heart and His light floods in thru that tiniest pin prick. It will overtake you. Even when He probably should say to you "Child, give it all or give nothing... I can not do anything with this!!!" But He does not, He takes it and He creates beauty with whatever you give.

So in the coming days as you enter the beauty of Christmas, while lighting that candle Christmas Eve that overwhelms and illuminates the entire room in His glow, please crouch there in the darkness for a minute & walk right up to the cliff of the unknown and step forward into His light.