Last night I put the finishing touches
on my Christmas decorations and lingered a few minutes to admire my handiwork.
No, it wasn’t a Pinterest-worthy scene, but all the same, I experienced
satisfaction. Fairy lights twinkled around the fireplace; the nativity and
Santa Clauses were prominently displayed; the tree glimmered with crystal “icicles”
re-purposed from a dismantled chandelier.
If all goes according to plan (does
that ever happen?), this Christmas should be happy and fun. My daughter and her
family will be joining us. I’m already picturing a chaotic
Christmas morning when a toddler lays waste to my decorating efforts. And I’m
loving it!
But in the middle of all this decorating
and day-dreaming, my thoughts drift back to Christmas 1990. Even if Facebook
had existed then, I wouldn’t have been posting about that one. A long,
stressful year was drawing to a close. My husband had lost his job, and we’d
moved to a new town. We were living in a rental half the size of our own house,
a house still for sale in a sluggish market. My dad was going through chemo
treatments for bladder cancer, and my brother was going through a different form
of torture, a second divorce. There didn’t seem to be much to celebrate. And
yet, what I recall most vividly about that Christmas was a moment of laughter.
My mother and I were sitting at the
table discussing those annoying Christmas newsletters. You know them: We’ve just returned from vacationing in the
Bahamas, our son is graduating from Harvard law school, our daughter is engaged
to a neurosurgeon. Happy Holidays, Fullofit and Felicity Feelgood. My mom said she’d considered sending her
own newsletter that year: Joe is undergoing
chemo, my son-in-law is out of work, my son is getting a divorce...again. “That
ought to cheer up folks,” she said. Then we started laughing. Laughing out
loud. Belly laughing.
As we laughed, I realized that in the
midst of all that was wrong, so much was right. We had been able to come together
as family, we had plenty to eat, we had a warm, comfortable house in which to
gather. And we hadn’t completely lost our sense of humor. While we might not
have had all we wanted, God had
blessed us with all we needed and
then some.
The purpose of this post is not to
brag about how good things are for me now but to offer encouragement to those
whose Christmas might not be so “jolly” this year. Not all Christmas memories
are warm and fuzzy. Not all Christmas experiences call to mind a Norman Rockwell
painting. Deaths of loved ones, illnesses, family issues, financial problems,
loneliness—all of these situations become intensified when it seems everyone
else is celebrating. But even in the middle of our problems and woes, we can claim
the promise of Christmas. Not a promise of a pain-free life, but the promise
that God shares in our pain and will see us through it.
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| I wish you and your loved ones a joyful and blessed Christmas. |
