God With Us

This morning, my husband rose before the sun to drive to work, where he will remain until 2pm before joining the rest of us at our friends’ house for Christmas dinner.

When Daniel leaves for work, I usually stay awake and have some quiet time, and today was no exception. I turned on some choral Christmas music, grabbed a box of cheapy markers, and began to doodle on the back of the paperwork Daniel received on his recent release from the hospital.

As I doodled and prayed, my heart was burdened for the many people I know whose hearts are heavy this Christmas season. It’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. We’re constantly reminded of this at every turn. But what do we do when it’s not? What do we do when it just serves as a vivid reminder of how deeply our hearts are aching?

Last night, while scrolling through Facebook, I encountered the anguished post of a woman I know whose young daughter is actively dying. Barring a miracle from heaven, this will be their last Christmas together, and she knows it. What can you possibly say to someone who’s walking in this kind of grief at Christmas time? Are there any words of comfort that don’t feel flippant and trite and woefully inadequate or insensitive?

I think also of the single moms working overtime and taking on second jobs or delivering groceries just to try to scrape together enough funds to put presents under the tree so their kids can feel like Christmas is magical—the women pasting smiles on their faces to exude warmth in their children’s presence but who retreat to the bathroom and lock the door for five minutes to brush away the tears of abandonment and loneliness and betrayal.

I think of the people struggling with infertility year after year as they watch other peoples’ children line up for photos with Santa and wonder if maybe next year will be the year their luck will change.

Or the people who’ve had to make the painful choice to draw difficult boundaries and spend Christmas alone rather than subjecting themselves to the toxic dynamics of the chronic family dysfunction.

I felt the burden of all of this really strongly this morning as I doodled, and I realized it was interfering with my illustration. I screwed up my attempt at drawing a sheep so badly that it basically ruined the entire image. It was a hot mess, and I considered just crumpling it up and throwing it away. Doodle session over. You can’t win ‘em all. But then something in me told me just to cut away the ugly parts and tape the remainder to a new sheet of paper and keep going. So that’s what I did.

I don’t have anything particularly profound to say except that I think it’s that way with God. He can take the messes we give Him and cut away the bad and turn what’s left into something beautiful. He’s a God who sees. He’s a God who heals. He’s a God who repairs. He’s a God who reconciles. He’s a God who cares.

But maybe most importantly, He’s a God who KNOWS because He’s a God who came to earth as a human to subject Himself to all our human ache and suffering in order to reconcile us to Himself. There’s nothing we are going through that Jesus does not personally and intimately understand through His own experience on earth. I mean, if you really think about it, all the struggles of the human condition are present at the nativity. From unwed teen motherhood to poverty and injustice and oppression, it’s all there.

While Jesus could do amazing things like walking on water and making blind men see, the Bible actually refers to Him as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Have we really stopped to imagine what that means? Has anyone else in the history of the world known what it’s like to be so abandoned and so alone and so afraid as to actually sweat blood? Only Jesus.

In her lifetime, Mary knew the sweet, unspeakable joy of cradling her perfect Son in her arms, but she also knew the desperate ache of watching Him suffer and placing Him back in God’s arms as He died. Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children, but Mary had to. The Holy family suffered every anguish imaginable.

And I have to imagine Joseph went through the wringer when he chose to remain faithful to Mary despite the way things looked. You don’t think he was severely misjudged? You don’t think people whispered about him and called him names like whatever the ancient equivalent of “beta cuck” might have been?

The original Christmas wasn’t exactly idyllic or perfectly fit for a Hallmark card. There was blood and sweat, scratchy straw, and smelly animals. Jesus had hardly even been born before there was a pretty intense plot to kill Him. They had to run from a corrupt government. They had to contend with grave injustice from the start.

Don’t get me wrong; hosts of heavenly angels singing, bright stars, and the miracle of the incarnation are still unfathomably special, but the point I’m trying to make is that conditions have never been perfect at Christmas, and remembrance of this reality should take some of the pressure off of us.

Whatever you’re going through, Jesus gets it, and He cares about it. You aren’t alone. You aren’t forsaken. He sees you crying in the bathroom. He sees you eating Christmas dinner alone. He hears you praying for your miracle. He knows today might be a little hard for you. He loves you where you are and no matter how deficient your holiday cheer level may seem.

So Merry Christmas. Cut off the ugly parts of your picture and tape the good parts to a fresh sheet of paper, inviting God to turn it into something beautiful despite the mess. Today may you rest in the comfort of the open arms of Immanuel, God with us.