Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and Zoe’s half birthday. The sweetness and sadness is so mingled together that I cannot separate one strand from the other.
So much of the bustle surrounding Christmas is an effort to cultivate a feeling of cheerfulness. Even with our best efforts, this produces a superficially effective medicine that sustains us for a few hours or days. In our most honest moments though, we will be like little Cindy Lou Who, looking for something deeper and more meaningful. Those who are suffering at Christmas don’t have to clear away as much of the tinsel to realize that no amount of Christmas cheer can heal the hurts in the world and in our hearts.
At Christmas last year, we were overjoyed to be expecting Zoe. We knew that she was such a sweet gift, one that we did not earn or deserve. There were dreams of what Christmas 2016 would be like. But I am so homesick this year, and no plane, train or automobile can get me home for Christmas. However, that yearning which Bing Crosby expressed so memorably, “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams,” points me forward to a longing for my true home. Though I so deeply wish that her room and stocking were not empty, Zoe is the one who is actually home for Christmas this year.
Grief does not know that Christmas is supposed to be a "happy" time. Yet this year, it seems that I have been ushered into the holy mystery of the season. The waiting of Advent has been palpable. This is certainly not the sugar-sweet happiness of childhood Christmases. It is the deep longing for God to make everything right, and the confidence that he began that restoration when he put on flesh. God himself has descended into the mess of our reality as the Christ child.
When in my soul I feel deep darkness and the sharp sting of death, in greater measure I know that a light has come. The promise to Israel, that "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isaiah 9:2) became a reality in the birth of Jesus. It becomes a reality in our hearts when we trust him. As the old hymn puts it, “Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, if He’s not born in thee, thy soul is still forlorn.”
As I meditate upon the manger, I know that Christ is with me. He is Emmanuel, “God with us.” Because the Creator entered creation, I can trust that he is truly Emmanuel in every circumstance- with me in the trials, with me in the waiting, with me even in the face of death itself.
HOPE has been carrying me through this season of sorrow and celebration. Not a hope that I will receive good things in life, or that life will be easy, or even that losing Zoe will be the worst thing to ever happen to me. The hope that I cling to is as certain as the rising of the sun. This hope is like a "memory of the future," as one author put it.
If this season is only about having “a merry little Christmas,” then it feels like is nothing to celebrate this year. But if Christmas is more than that, if Christmas is about remembering what God has done on our behalf, how he has come near to us, then I can have this real hope. The hope that grief will one day be no more, the hope that every tear will be wiped away, the hope that death will meet its death.
Because of the Bethlehem baby, I will see my baby again. Because Christ came not only to the cradle but to the cross, and was gloriously raised from the tomb, Zoe will one day be resurrected. That is Christmas hope worth celebrating.
