Sure, Christmas cards have been written, gifts have been purchased and wrapped (and then unwrapped by our enthusiastic 14 month old). Menus have been made, the tree decked, the stocking stuffers bought, and advent readings have been done - we even made paper snowflakes, including a very vividly purple one [because three year olds].
But in many ways, all those things have felt very mechanical with only splashes of color. A lot of going through the motions without a lot of depth of feeling behind it. I've been told this is normal when one is going through trauma, so I'm giving myself lots of grace in it and doing what we need to do to make it through this season. If this is you as well this season, much grace, friend. Give yourself grace.
Today [when I started writing this, now yesterday] the kids and I set out to bake Christmas cookies - because it's three [now two] days before Christmas, and we hadn't yet. So we pulled out ingredients for Greek Cookies and Nut balls, Kahlua Chocolate cookies, and rolled Sugar cookies - and were up to our elbrows* in flour and butter within seconds. *that was a typo, but it's totally an accurate description for how floury the kids were, so I'm leaving it!
Frank Sinatra was crooning Christmas songs on the radio, and snow was gently falling outside - and the boys had a rare moment of delightedly creating moose-shaped cookies and not wrestling/fighting/spitting on things/whining about wanting to eat dough - and I thought to myself, wow, Christmas is almost here. It's actually almost here.
And for five brief seconds, it felt like Christmas. Like really and truly, felt like Christmas. With joy and childlike delight, anticipation of laughter and sweet memories - the season fully upon us.
And then I heard Jon on the phone in the other room, talking to his oncologist, because he's been under with a bad cold all week and he'd just taken his temperature and, sure enough, had a fever. Any fever at all is an emergency, when you're mid-chemo cycle - so thus began our still ongoing evening of back and forth to doctors, tired kids in tow, scrambles for childcare, and now culminating in a return to the unfortunately familiar ER.
So here we sit. Waiting on test results and x-rays and praying it's nothing and maybe we'll get to go home in the wee hours of the morning [we didn't]. With that old familiar sense of dread and worry - is it serious? Is it nothing? Are we going to be okay? Oh my gosh, I'm so tired. Ho ho humbug. Nothing says Christmas joy like the cold sterile floors of the ER.
I don't know what your situation is - but I'm guessing some of you know that struggle - wanting to find the joy and delight of Christmas, but finding it elusive.
As I drove the kids home after seeing the doctor, to drop them off with a dear friend, snow spitting in the headlights - the car was silent. I couldn't handle another round of Holly Jolly Christmas or Santa Baby, and so the radio sat cold and neglected. But eventually the silence got too oppressive and the kids a little too whiny, so I started singing instead - favorite old carols, the ones with minor chords and words that mean something in the hard times as well as the happy.
"Mom, what song are you playing?"
"I'm singing Oh Holy Night and O Come O Come Emmanuel."
"Mommy, what does Emmanuel mean?"
"Emmanuel means 'God with us'. It's a name we use for Jesus, because He was God, but not a God who was far away, or unseen, but God who came down and was right there with His people - who could be seen, and touched and hugged. Jesus is God who came close and was with us." ... truly He taught us to love one another... chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother... and in His name, all oppression shall cease.
As I drove back to the hospital 30 minutes later, those same words kept running through my head.
O Come O Come Emmanuel - God be with us. In the *midst of* oppression... in the *midst of* sickness. In the middle of the ER, as we sit in the hospital room. As we long for and wait for chains of cancer to be broken. As we anticipate (maybe) spending Christmas apart from our kids, in this same hospital room.
Then the Grinch thought of something (s)he hadn't before. What if Christmas, (s)he thought, doesn't come from feeling merry? What if it isn't about food and friends and family and being home? What if it doesn't matter whether you're in a beautiful Christmas Eve service, or the hospital? What if it doesn't matter if you're angry at God or life or cancer? What if it doesn't matter if you're worn thin and are struggling to even try to find joy? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
What if it simply is about recognizing that God has come? Or *not* recognizing it, because He comes whether we acknowledge it or not. Comes, into our humanity. Comes to us in the hospital, on the 16th floor, as we wait for news of whether we celebrate here or at home? He comes regardless of whether we feel like it or not. He sits next to us in the hard, uncomfortable chairs and amidst the many night wake-ups, amidst sickness and discomfort [as my friend Pam says, a hospital is certainly a place where Jesus would be]. Comes amidst our anger and our sadness; our sleepless nights; our hope and our fierce love for one another; our sadness in leaving our babies at home yet again.
Comes with the promise that this is not the end of the story. That hope wins - whether in this life or the next. That cancer and death and disease, it does not win. Come to proclaim, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free." (Luke 4:18) Comes to proclaim, "I AM" to all our doubts and fears and weariness.
Please do not take this post to mean that I *feel* Emmanuel, God with me, in this season - quite the opposite. I have hit my breaking point - and I feel very little, except extremely sad and like control has completely escaped me (...and very tired). This hospitalization is a little set-back, nothing too serious hopefully, but sometimes all it takes is a straw to break the camel's back, especially after several long months - and the thought of not being together with Jon and our kids, or not being home for Christmas, it's just too much ((✋ camel here)).
But I am clinging to the hope that whether I see Him or not - whether I feel Him or not - Christmas, when it is stripped of all its adornments and sparkle, Christmas is the same in a hospital room or a cathedral. It is the same when you are alone or when you are surrounded by loved ones. It is the same when you are grieving and when you are rejoicing.
It is the simple promise, wherever you are, you are not alone. Emmanuel, God with us, has come.
I love you.
ReplyDeleteLove you too!
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