There were so many Christmases when I was young that seem hazy now. Impossibly tall trees and cookies left out by the fire and dad’s smile hidden behind the camera in the morning.
There were some when I was older - too cool now to be videotaped, too self-conscious for cookies.
I try not to remember them. Precious time wasted at the altar of the skewed perspective of youth.
There were Christmases after I left home. Suitcases full of college-stained laundry sitting strangely within the walls of a younger me.
Those were always too short. Not enough time spent with family. Too much spent with friends from high school I hadn’t yet lost touch with.
There was the Christmas after graduation. When I would use PTO to sleep in and my new paycheck to buy real gifts for the first time.
I knew everything and nothing then, like every other 20-something before and since me. I remember feeling trapped by an unknown future, only realizing far too late how much freedom comes with that kind of uncertainty.
Then there were my first few Christmases married. Away from my family for most of them. With another that I barely fit into. A family that wouldn’t be line for long.
Those Christmases ached. The longing, the waiting, the unsettledness. An Advent embodied in a way I’d never known before. Flesh and feeling put around a hope deferred.
And then came the first Christmas after. Home again, finally. But also, what then was home? My old room with this new emptiness. My old last name with this new identity.
That Christmas and those that followed would heal me. Heavy with surrender, strung out with lament. The holy dirge of silent, silent nights. Fear not, for behold – this good news, this great joy.
Fear not, fear not, fear not.
And then.
Our first Christmas together. Hope and happiness tempered in part by old wounds, but swollen, too, with the promise that God delights to give good gifts.
And then.
The next Christmas we were pregnant. And I spent much of it nauseous, thinking of Mary in such new light. What discomfort she must have felt. What joy. What wonder. What loneliness, what honor, what humility. What a God.
And now.
A new tiny stocking hangs next to ours. And I cry at the sight of this piece of my soul with such tiny feet. I look around and could crumble at the thought of all this goodness. It hardly feels fair to feel this content. It barely feels real in light of so much that came before.
And I know, as I sit here typing this by the fire, and she coos from a quilt laid on the floor, littered with toys, that this season too will pass and be replaced by something new.
I know life ebbs and flows, that trouble is promised, that true peace is both now and not yet.
But isn’t that the wonder of Christmas? That every year we celebrate the “now” of that tension. That no matter the kind of Christmas we have – the hard ones and the happy, the ones that break us and the ones that heal – the story doesn’t change. The manger, the Messiah, the wonder, the gift.
Isn’t this what Christmas does? Exposes wounds just to heal them. Takes broken hearts and fills them with that tender truer love. Dethrones our every idol to make way, make way for Christ is born.
Doesn’t it always turn the humble into holy? Guide us home with a single northern star. Take our offerings of song, stable, swaddle and lay them down before the diapered divine.
And oh worthy these things are of celebration? This story, already written, wrapped around us with sovereign, omniscient care.
Undeterred by our circumstances, unaltered by our mistakes, universal in the goodness of the news it brings, yet immeasurably intimate, mercifully near, utterly life altering to each and every one who hears.
This was beautiful. I resonated with so much of it. Thank you for sharing 🤍
Oh yes! Emanuel