I remember our 1st Christmas post-tragedy. It was too painful to celebrate. This is not a surprise, as holidays are often as hard as they are good, regardless of who we are and what we’re walking through. Too, fresh grief complicates the already delicate balance tipping the scales so far that the additional weight of pain is our only possible focus. There are more memories to visit, more questions of what ‘should’ have been, more longing for more, and a genuine curiosity of what life would look like if________ (fill in the blank with the subject of your grief) hadn’t happened. More love expended that is cut off from its intended vessel means more grief and more pain. That year we only had the capacity to limp in survival mode, so we took a holiday sabbatical. We did not get any of the Christmas boxes out of the attic. We didn’t exchange a single gift. We asked everyone not to send us cards- the pain was just too great. What was the point? My drive to celebrate had always been to share how well God loves us and the miraculous way His love transforms our world at Christmas time, but because I was picking up so many broken pieces of my life, I did not have the capacity for anything else.
I focused on Christmas at a very different level that year. I looked into Jesus’ lineage, Christmas prophesy in the prophets, the Christmas story itself in the books of Luke and Matthew, and even the allusion (NOT illusion) to His birth and early existence in the books of John and Mark. I ripped apart the biblical account of the Christmas story verse by verse. I read it in my mom’s Bible, I read commentaries and other resources, I journaled, and then I worshipped and sat in His presence. I also read “The Shack” by W. Paul Young. I know this seems contrary to the Christmas season, but I was led to my mom’s copy with her handwritten notes inside of it. What I’ve grown to understand since, is that our traditional celebration with all its luster, games, plays, and concerts is often void of the acknowledgement of the suffering of the season that existed in Biblical history and still exists today. My reading of “The Shack” was more appropriate than I realized at the time because it brings up many of the most profound questions of suffering. It seems that Christians either love or hate the book. It brings into focus those things that many of us don’t want to talk about. But suffering and grief are found throughout the Bible and Christmas is no exception.
Still, in some ways I felt like a grinch that year. I “puzzled and puzzled ‘till (my) puzzler was sore… What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?” What if it is more than what I knew it to be as a child, as an adult, as a parent, and even as a pastor? It’s likely that confusion twisted your face as you read those words… Did you think “What?! She’s quoting Dr. Suess?! He wasn’t even a believer!” Why yes, I did. You’re also likely thinking “How could she say that Christmas is more than Jesus?!” The quick answer is that it isn’t. The longer answer is what I learned during the Christmas season of 2022 and didn’t know how to put into words until now- we can’t truly understand the depth and gravity of Christmas unless we look at it through the lens of Easter. More notable and powerful still, we need to look at it from the perspective of good Friday. This seems obvious, doesn’t it? Especially for a pastor… but one of the hazards of growing up in church (and being a believer my entire life), had been a lack of expectation for new revelation in scripture. I think many of us read the Christmas story as a celebratory birthday party with our heroes overcoming all odds guided by the Lord to bring us the best present the world has ever been given. While I’m not saying this is incorrect, we are missing something if this is the only way we read it.
Until we understand how deep the depths of the world go in depravity, grief, fear, and etc.; we cannot possibly have perspective of how tall the Lord’s mountains reach. The deeper our perspective of pain is, the greater we understand the heights that Love had to trek to bring us to heaven. Jesus came into this world in pain physically, spiritually, and emotionally and He left it (as a person) in pain that was compounded to a level that we don’t have the capacity or perspective to come close to fully understanding. I (and other witnesses) can tell you that the pain of birthing a child doesn’t even compare to the pain of burying one, but Mary knew before she even heard His newborn cry that her heart would be pierced. We can ask her how much she understood when we meet her one day, but she knew that the pain would come. And still, she had hope because she had faith in what God revealed to her through the angel Gabriel. Hope existed that the divided country would be healed by a love that no one yet understood. The same is true today. We have hope because we know that the great divided contrast of this broken world can only be healed by a love that will always be greater than it. It cannot be healed by might and power- only the beautiful love of Jesus. He entered the world in expectation and He left the world with anticipation and expectation.
In my study, I stopped at a text that I had not before. Please read Matthew 2:16-18
16 When Herod realized that the visitors from the East had tricked him, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighborhood who were two years old and younger—this was done in accordance with what he had learned from the visitors about the time when the star had appeared.
17 In this way what the prophet Jeremiah had said came true:
18 “A sound is heard in Ramah,
the sound of bitter weeping.
Rachel is crying for her children;
she refuses to be comforted,
for they are dead.”
I had always read these verses from the perspective of Jesus’ miraculous escape. The trap had been set and would’ve been successful without God’s warning dream to Joseph. We celebrate the warning and also Joseph’s obedience to flee to Egypt, but I had never before stopped to ask myself what this looked like from the eyes of those babies’ moms. What if you were one of those moms? Suffering in all forms is woven through the Christmas story; grief of death, separation by distance, and poverty (to name a few).
Today my eyes are opened to the perspective of suffering at Christmas time. I see the beauty of the salvation army buckets and the people smiling and dropping change into them. I know that Compassion children often get gifts from their sponsors and that trees in church reception spaces are covered with suggested purchases for those less fortunate. Giving abounds at Christmastime! But giving could not be as powerful nor as beautiful as it is without the lack that suffering creates. I would never suggest to keep poverty and suffering so that we can experience the contrasting blessing, but our fallen world allows for no real solution. The solution is other-worldly- it is heaven. We will experience living without decay and suffering in eternity and not before. Christmas, then, gives us an opportunity to hold both things in our hands simultaneously in a way that is not as potent throughout the rest of the year- the contrast of pain and of blessing. I feel the sharp emptiness of my desire to hug our KGRs but I also feel the depth of beautiful hugs of Klark, Kharis, and Kyroo and I have a much deeper gratitude for them.
Now, at Christmastime, I can’t wait to get our tree. I put up some of the decorations of Christmases past (as they were among the few things we were able to recover from our fire destroyed home). I put up decorations that were sent to us from across the country as word of our lack that 1st year spread. And I put up decorations that represent our lives now. It is very deep. It is very personal. I cry and I laugh. Then we run full force into the season- it is so beautiful to have children to share the joy and magic with! We pick our tree and wear our hats and make our pajamas. We create and gather Christmas blessings for others. We attend events. We sing Christmas songs all day (Carlos loves this so much ;P). We make cards and mail them out. We think about a gift that our boys might enjoy and we eat way too much.
We celebrate hard, and we also grieve hard. Our KGRs are with us at every turn. The bear made out of their clothing attends multiple events with us. Their colors are represented anywhere we can. Their spirits are in every family picture. And their names go on all our cards. One of the most profound things we do is choose tags from a tree that represent children the ages and genders our children would be if they were still here and we buy them gifts. It’s all beautiful and its all hard. The tears flow all season long. We are tired physically, mentally, and emotionally all season long but we are closer to all of our family throughout that month than we have cause to be the rest of the year- so the joy overflows too!
When December closes, I choose to hold onto it all just a little while longer by acknowledging that the season isn’t truly over until hope leads those wise men to their king. We celebrate that final day on 1/6 and then it must stop. I know that I have no more excuse to keep the decorations out. Half of me wants to stay there forever, and the other half of me acknowledges that it all wouldn’t be so special if it was every day nor would we have the energy for Christmas every day. I know, too, that by the time we stop finding pine needles everywhere the world will “need a little Christmas” again, and I’ll prepare my heart for the emotional onslaught and do it all painfully and joyfully again.
Then comes the hardest part of Christmas- putting it away. I have to pack up the decorations my angel babies made with their beautiful hands that I can no longer hold. I put away the school picture ornaments and the other ornaments that they all touched and played with. I look at the line of glue holding the Santa cookie plate together and I wish I could remember which one of them dropped it- I love that crack! I laugh at the discounted ornament my mom and I bought together that last year that says “Oh Holly Night” and I remember, and I enjoy remembering, and I realize that there will be less to remember until I bring it all out again next year. Is there any season more full of memories than Christmas?
But the hardest part of boxing Christmas up is putting away the manger. The figurines were my great grandmothers, before they were my grandmothers, before they were mine. My dad made the nativity structure itself and I painted it. Every year one of our kids unwraps baby Jesus with their clumsy young child fingers on Christmas morning and somehow, he is not yet broken. I can’t see that manger without seeing the picture of all four KGRs looking at their scout elf’s message written in chocolate chips and marshmallows- “BYE, I <3 YOU!”- one final gut punch as I box it all up and anticipate enjoying it for 11 months. Jesus is the glue that holds our “past-life” to our current life and Christmas is my in-your-face reminder of that fact. Just like the two halves of that plate, we are broken and beautiful.
As humans, we do NOT have a choice whether to have pain or not- it is part of this world. Our only choice is what to do with that pain. Will we choose to open our hearts to suffering and to love? We can’t have one without the other. Will we collect the shards and allow our Lord to turn them into a beautiful mosaic? Alternately, we can choose to turn away and not let pain in, but then love can’t enter either. Whenever I choose to wade through the murkiness of grief and suffering, I’ve noticed that the love, joy, and gratitude that abound are well worth the pain. What will you choose?
Signed,
a mama in tears with her hands raised. “Keep Going, Really!” I promise the beauty of life is worth all the pain.
Putting Away Christmas
