I’ve been thinking about my last post. Christmas is hard when we don’t get what we want. It is. It’s hard and not fun, and we would be silly to pretend otherwise.
But I wanted to clarify.
The reality of a hard Christmas isn’t fun. And dealing with that has to be real or it’s not worth a hill of popcorn garland.
SO, if you read my last post and heard, “Suck it up, put on a good face, and pretend” and maybe God will change your Christmas somehow, then I didn’t communicate very well. Because I realized later that you might have heard that in what I said. It’s not at all what I meant. But it was there, all the same.
If you are facing a hard Christmas this year, I’m sorry. Always and of first importance, I am sorry. This is not what I wish for you or anyone. This circumstance, this fear, this disappointment — it hurts you, and I hate that.
Second, whatever else you do, do not put on a good face. Not for anyone. Hard Christmases only become harder when you’re faking that it’s not a hard Christmas. Find your person and vent. Tell the truth about how you feel. Don’t answer anyone without being honest, even if you don’t tell them all the gory details. And this goes especially for God. Tell him exactly what is hard and why you wish it was different and how you’d like him to change things on your behalf. He is good with that. He loves that kind of honesty. He never approves of our false-face religiosity that pretends it’s all good when it absolutely isn’t. Don’t pretend.
Third, and most important, start to move forward. But not by tucking it all down inside and serving anyway. Not by opening your home while harboring the same bad attitude. Not by saying thank you and despising the gift all the same. God can change your hard Christmas, but it doesn’t require more work on your part. It requires his work on your behalf.
His name is Emmanuel. God with us.
The Christmas story begins with his birth, his rather unimpressive and altogether miraculous entrance into our world. God did both … at the same time. He poured out his power and glory into what was an otherwise inauspicious event. A baby was born. To a poor carpenter and his wife. In a stable. In a no-name town in a backwater part of the Roman empire. And we’ve already talked about how hard many, many parts of this story are.
And yet, at the same time, it was holy. It was utterly miraculous; it didn’t make any sense by normal human logic. It was full of glory (angels, much?), and God managed everyone from the highest kings to the lowliest shepherds to orchestrate this crucial step in his plan to redeem mankind and defeat sin, Satan, and death.
Hard and glorious. It was both. And your hard Christmas can be both, too. Because he is still Emmanuel.
The secret to letting God redeem your hard Christmas is about letting him bring all that he is into your hard. The Bible has lots of phrases for this:
- Wait on the Lord (Ps. 27:14).
- In all your ways, acknowledge him (Prov. 3:6).
- Remain in me (John 15:4).
But they all mean the same thing, really. We have to refuse to work harder and try harder and pretend better, hoping all the while that something will change. Instead, we openly admit that none of this is what we want, call on him as Emmanuel, and ask him to show up on our behalf and in our hard. Just as he showed up two thousand years ago. Just as he promised he will always do.
And then we have to wait for him to do exactly that. Of course, you may still have to go to the event, welcome the unwelcome family member, spend Christmas without a loved one, or receive the unwanted gift. But when you do that AND wait on him to show up, things can actually change. You find yourself responding with more grace and love and kindness. You serve and realize that you aren’t as bitter, that things aren’t as awkward, as they had started out to be.
The secret is to let God be Emmanuel. Let him come into your heart and into your hurt and change both of them, from the inside out.
No amount of pretending or sucking it up will accomplish this. Only God can. And only if you let him.
Your hard Christmas is not what I wish for you. But just like the first Christmas, it can be much more than you’d ever hoped when God comes into it. That’s when the miracle happens…every time.
