So It's Christmas Time

So it’s Christmas time.

Everything is supposed to be magical, sparkling white, clean, fresh, romantic, and beautifully perfect. Time for relationships to be mended, illness overcome, sought-after gifts received, and even death held at bay. It’s time for restoration and an idyllic life for everyone, even the most disagreeable person in town. That’s what the holidays are to be like, aren’t they?  Be honest with me. Isn’t that what we see on the silver screen, the television, and in many of the Christmas books in stores and libraries? Perfect, perfect, perfect moments just for us at Christmas time.

Who says so? Who are these people who craft the stories and create the illusion that Christmas is the perfect, “most wonderful time of the year”?  I would like to have a cup of tea with them to find out about their lives.  Do they have lives like that? Is everyone in their lives full of sweetness and light? Is everything just so?

Yes, I’m a little “grinchy and scroogie” this week. Yes, my tree is up. The snowmen are on the mantel, and my husband’s favorite—Christmas mouse—once again resides on the table, like it has for the past twenty-nine Christmases, just in case you were wondering if I’m simply overwhelmed by my to-do list. Truly, I’m not. My decorations—I’ve hardly noticed them this week. I’ve been somewhere else—somewhere else in my mind and heart.

Maybe the people who write all those fluffy marshmallow-fudge stories are just like me and maybe you, too. They want life to be perfect. Maybe, like me, they know three people in the hospital, one who could slip into the next life at any moment. Maybe they know someone, like I do, who is trying to put life back together after sexual assault. Perhaps that screenwriter or author knows of an addict who fights memories of abuse and the loss of a friend. Maybe that author is estranged from family, like I am, even though I don’t want to be.  In the past week I have touched all these realities in one way or another.

Life is painful and difficult, and through my tears and heartache for those I know who are suffering I yearn for a perfect Christmas. Where is the button, the fairy godmother, a magic spell, a special key? I want things to be like they should be.  May I have Heaven, please?

Emmanuel. That is his name. No key, no magic, no fairy dust. Emmanuel--God with us. That beloved name for a beloved Savior who came quietly into a dreadful, sorrowful, desperate world. As the years pass and the world becomes darker and darker, the light of Jesus and the beauty of Emmanuel touches me more and more deeply.

For me this week, it meant him reminding me that he cared about everyone who was on my heart and in my prayers. He has plans for them and me in all the pain, and the pain and brokenness would not be the final word over the lives of the people involved.  To the aching he would bring strength where the Enemy wants to weaken. Emmanuel would bring victory and blessing, though circumstances looked like defeat. There wasn’t a situation where he wasn’t involved or a plan that wasn’t already in place because he moves among us, walks alongside us, and leads the way for us. Finally and ultimately, every wrong will be righted, and not even death will have the last word for God’s children.

I want perfect. I want Heaven.  But perfect will have to wait. For now I only get glimpses of what is to come.  Yet in all the mire of this life I get Emmanuel—my hero—God with us walking with me. So I will smile at the syrupy Christmas stories and enjoy one or two, and I will grieve with those who ache with the pains of life, and deep within I will embrace  Christmas time—Emmanuel time.