The weather here has been unseasonably warm for December. It isn't that we normally expect a white Christmas in South Carolina, but my boys aren't usually wearing shorts after Thanksgiving. It hasn't felt like Christmas outside.
And yet this is when the cashiers at the grocery store start asking, "Are you ready for Christmas?" They are asking about whether we have the menu planned and the presents bought, but I hear it on a deeper level.
I've never felt ready for Christmas.
My husband calls the day after Christmas the most anticlimactic day of the year. You spend so much time anticipating December 25, and how could a regular old day follow such a day of excitement? Such is the curse placed on December 26. For almost all of the past several Christmas seasons, I have felt like I didn't fully capture Christmas that year. Maybe I had waited too long to buy presents and so the week before Christmas was hectic. Or maybe I had missed church due to sickness and didn't get to sing many of my favorite Advent hymns. Whatever the reason, it always felt like something was missing.
And so every year, once Thanksgiving ends, I look ahead and wonder if this year will be different. Will I really feel deeply what Advent, the waiting time, is all about?
The last five months have been painful and difficult for our family, and so I just assumed that when December started, it would be like every other year. Biding my time until Christmas came, and then we would just start the whole year over again. In fact, I thought this might be the most difficult Christmas we have ever had, as we are facing many transitions in the new year and aren't quite sure how to approach them.
To my surprise, I think this is the first year, maybe in my whole life, but at least in a long time, that I understand what it means to be in Advent, to remember those who were waiting for the Messiah, and now, thousands of years after his birth and death, to be looking ahead to his coming again.
When everything is cheery and bright and happy, it's hard to feel a desire for some kind of rescue, for something different. Things are fine just the way they are, thank you very much.
But when life is hard, when relationships have broken, when the future is uncertain, when you lose trust in those who are in authority over you... it's all you can do to say, "Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!"
I don't know that I have it in me to hope that every Christmas will be like this year. But I hope that I don't forget the heavy weight I have carried these past few weeks. Mary, Joseph, far from home and physically exhausted. Simon, Anna, wondering if they would die before they saw the Messiah. Zechariah, Elizabeth, realizing that the God they worshiped really could do the impossible. That is the God I want, and that is the Savior I need. That is Christmas.
This morning we woke to a cloudy, drizzly day, and a touch of chill in the air. The warm weather is gone, at least for today, which is what I had been hoping for, but I had hoped for cold, sunny weather, not dreary downpours. It still doesn't feel like Christmas outside, but here, in our warm house, with my husband and my two precious boys, my heart is waiting and expectant. I'm ready for Christmas.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Making Peace with Grief
Grief didn't knock on the door or give me any warning that it had taken up residence. It crept in while I wasn't looking and made its home in every recess of my heart, and it waited. Waited for me to notice it was there.
I felt its presence before I knew its name. My life as a functional person, as a mother and wife, slowly ceased to exist. It wasn't until a friend looked into my eyes and heard me describe what I had been experiencing that I started to grasp what was happening to me, to frame it in a way I could understand. I didn't know how it could define me so quickly and pervasively, but at least I knew what to call it.
I've learned that there is no timeline for grief. I was at the gym, listening to a podcast where a woman was giving advice to a mother whose six-year-old son was still trying to process the loss of his father, which had happened when he was three years old. She made sure to emphasize that although the freshness of pain may lessen over time, grief and the loss are always part of the story.
You don't get over grief. It's part of you. This helped me to a certain extent, because I was able to see that this grief I have experienced is not an invasive presence that I am going to be spending the next several months trying to get rid of and forget.
Maybe there is a way to make peace with grief.
To see it not as an intruder, but as another chapter of the story that the Lord is writing for my life. It doesn't mean that I rejoice in it. It doesn't mean that I want more things like this to happen to me. But it does mean that I don't have to feel like the aftermath, the sorrow, the tears, has been a waste.
If grief was every breath, then depression was cancer. Counseling and medication and getting out of bed each day was the chemotherapy, and I am still doing chemotherapy, four months later.
The difference is, our culture has a language to talk about cancer. It's not pleasant to discuss, and I'm sure that those who have experience with cancer might be slightly offended that I would compare it to depression on any level. I certainly don't intend to offend, but I think the analogy is helpful, because in the same way that no one would ever blame someone for having cancer, when depression has any part of its source in one's biology and physiology, it is no more one's fault for experiencing it. But most people, especially Christians, don't see depression that way. So instead it is treated like a sin, or, at best, like a disease, but a disease that you brought on yourself.
And so this journey begins with me looking grief and anxiety and depression and all their associated friends straight in the eyes and saying, "I see you. I hear you. I know that you are here. But I will not let this part of my life be any kind of ending point. By God's grace, it will be a beginning of me learning how to live well in the midst of you being here. My hope is not in a cure for a disorder, but in a Person, and he has promised never to leave me or forsake me."
I felt its presence before I knew its name. My life as a functional person, as a mother and wife, slowly ceased to exist. It wasn't until a friend looked into my eyes and heard me describe what I had been experiencing that I started to grasp what was happening to me, to frame it in a way I could understand. I didn't know how it could define me so quickly and pervasively, but at least I knew what to call it.
I've learned that there is no timeline for grief. I was at the gym, listening to a podcast where a woman was giving advice to a mother whose six-year-old son was still trying to process the loss of his father, which had happened when he was three years old. She made sure to emphasize that although the freshness of pain may lessen over time, grief and the loss are always part of the story.
You don't get over grief. It's part of you. This helped me to a certain extent, because I was able to see that this grief I have experienced is not an invasive presence that I am going to be spending the next several months trying to get rid of and forget.
Maybe there is a way to make peace with grief.
To see it not as an intruder, but as another chapter of the story that the Lord is writing for my life. It doesn't mean that I rejoice in it. It doesn't mean that I want more things like this to happen to me. But it does mean that I don't have to feel like the aftermath, the sorrow, the tears, has been a waste.
When grief arrived, it found company. Some of its companions have actually been a part of my story for a very long time. Loss and sorrow woke them from their restless slumber.
The difference is, our culture has a language to talk about cancer. It's not pleasant to discuss, and I'm sure that those who have experience with cancer might be slightly offended that I would compare it to depression on any level. I certainly don't intend to offend, but I think the analogy is helpful, because in the same way that no one would ever blame someone for having cancer, when depression has any part of its source in one's biology and physiology, it is no more one's fault for experiencing it. But most people, especially Christians, don't see depression that way. So instead it is treated like a sin, or, at best, like a disease, but a disease that you brought on yourself.
And so this journey begins with me looking grief and anxiety and depression and all their associated friends straight in the eyes and saying, "I see you. I hear you. I know that you are here. But I will not let this part of my life be any kind of ending point. By God's grace, it will be a beginning of me learning how to live well in the midst of you being here. My hope is not in a cure for a disorder, but in a Person, and he has promised never to leave me or forsake me."
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