Have Yourself a Crappy Little Christmas

" Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yuletide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now."

Well, it has begun again. Our annual madcap quest for the perfect Christmas. Everyone is rushing about like crazy beings. Traffic snarls to a crawl. Lines in the stores try patience which is thin at the best of times. We buy and bake and decorate and cook with impunity. We've got to have the perfect tree, just to take it down again. We have to provide cakes and cookies to friends and neighbours near and far, who neither need them or want them. Be honest, how much Christmas baking ends up in the trash can? We gorge ourselves on excess food, and then guilt ourselves when it's all over and we step on the scale. Do we really enjoy all that extra food, or is every mouthful swallowed with a spoonful of guilt, like the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down? We attend this party and that, this concert and that, this service and that, because it just wouldn't be Christmas without. We spend money we don't have (think trillions of dollars of personal debt we Canadians are carrying collectively) to buy gifts people don't need. Whee, what fun (in sarcastic font).

Every year, when it's all done, and we collapse, exhausted, fat, bloated, and broke, we promise ourselves that next year, it'll be different. But it's not. And if it is, if we actually dare to step out of the craziness, we become something of an oddity. Like the Utah mom who "cancelled Christmas". She's all over the news. Some are applauding. Some are criticizing. But everyone is noticing. Because, let's face it, for most of us, it's never really different. Despite our pledge to join the "Advent Conspiracy", we end up sucked into the vortex.

For those upon whom different is forced, there is enormous grief. Or guilt. For the family that truly can't afford gifts for their kids, Christmas is hard. For the family who has lost a loved one this past year, and is facing a Christmas without, Christmas is hard. For the single or the widow or widower or divorced who may face a Christmas alone, Christmas is hard. For those who have to work on Christmas Day, Christmas is hard. For those for whom family dynamics are complicated and messy, Christmas is hard. Which means that Christmas is hard for probably 95% of the population. It's hard for most of us, but we pretend it's wonderful.

Why? Why is it that every year, we are struck by the madness that is December? Why is it that every year, we get caught up in the quest to create the perfect Christmas? Perfect gifts, perfect decorations, perfect family, perfect food, perfect services, perfect loveliness, and it had better snow just perfectly on December 24. Perfection is such a demanding taskmaster. It sucks every joy out of life. It fills me with discontent, with anger, with striving and grasping and trying to control things over which I have no control. The search for perfection is so pointless. In this broken world, it just doesn't exist.

That's why we celebrate Christmas.

Because in this broken world, perfection doesn't exist. People get sick and die. Relationships are shattered by anger and misunderstanding and unforgiveness. Families are torn apart by addictions, abuse, selfishness, and apathy. Weird Aunt Mildred is just weird. Uncle Louis is nasty. Joe over here drinks too much and Sally is a gossip. And me? I am impatient, cynical, prone to brood, prone to pessimism I try to disguise as realism, quick to worry, quick to fear. My faith is shaky at best sometimes, and my life is frayed around all the edges.

That's when Jesus shows up -- right in the midst of my brokenness. He comes in the middle of the night, to a vagrant carpenter and his sort-of wife. He arrives in a barn, in the middle of blood and afterbirth, sheep crap and dirt. He comes into the most imperfect Christmas ever. No decorations except dung and dirt. No food except animal food. No gifts. Not on the night he was born. He had to wait two years for those. And the guests to his Christmas party would make Weird Aunt Mildred and Uncle Louis seem normal.

He comes because our world -- my world -- is not perfect. He is quite comfortable with mess. He doesn't mind brokenness. He loves Weird Aunt Mildred and Uncle Louis. He even loves me.

So I'm not going to try to create a perfect Christmas. I'm not even going to feel sad or guilty for my less-than-Christmas-card Christmas. Instead, I'm going welcome Jesus into my crappy little Christmas. I'm going to welcome him into my broken relationships, into my first-Christmas-without,  into my Christmas that follows a year of disappointments and hurt. I'm going to welcome him into my messy, mixed-up, anything-but-perfect life. I think he'll feel quite at home.

And right in the middle of my crappy little Christmas, as I look around at the hurt and heartache, I will marvel at the thought that he came. The wonder of his coming shines all the brighter against the backdrop of my mess. Oh, the baby, born in a barn, for me! For this very mess that I am in right now. It's not perfect, and that makes it perfect. Because he came for the imperfect. He came for me.

I am beginning to love my crappy little Christmas, even when my heart isn't light, when there are no golden days of yore, when my faithful friends who are dear remain in their graves rather than at my side at Christmas, and my troubles are pressing in. I know this: I am thankful beyond words that he came in a mess, for the messed-up people of this world. I am so grateful that there is no part of my crappy Christmas that surprises him or is beyond his ability to redeem. That's why he came. I am blown away, simply blown away that he would want to celebrate Christmas with me. It moves me to tears. Happy tears. I can't offer him fine presents or figgy pudding, perfect decorations or perfect anything at all. And he doesn't even care. The wonder of that is breathtaking. It makes my Christmas fairly perfect, in all the right ways.

"What can I give him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
But what can I give him?
Give my heart."

Heartache

"A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island."

It's not quite December, but it's close. The view outside my window is definitely wintry. And the way I'm feeling today, I wish I was a rock. I wish I was an island. It would be so very easy to go back to building "walls, a fortress deep and mighty that none may penetrate". It would be easy to bury myself in my books and work, to hide myself in my room, to touch no one and allow no one to touch me. It feels so tempting.

Because life hurts. Relationships hurt. And sometimes, like today, I wonder if it's worth it at all. Is it really worth it to invest time and energy and emotion into a relationship that, in a heartbeat, in a breath, just ends? Except that it doesn't end. It leaves nerve endings, raw, still firing, as if a limb is still attached when it is not. How do you scratch an itch that isn't there? How do you soothe an ache in a hand that is gone? My head knows that it's over, but my heart can't seem to remember. My head tells me it's not forever, but my heart just feels a pain that goes on and on.

I miss her. Oh, God, how I miss her.

The thought drifts through my head, If I had never met her, I wouldn't miss her now. It was easier before, when I was locked up behind my walls, in the days when I touched no one and no one touched me. It was less painful in the days before I took those first, stumbling, tentative steps toward trust. It didn't hurt so much back then. I didn't feel much of anything back then.

The thought drifts through my head, Maybe it isn't worth it after all. Maybe learning to love and trust is just a sham after all. "If I never loved, I never would have cried." It's too late to do anything about it now, because I did love and I got hurt, but I want to cradle the severed limb protectively, and make sure something like this never happens again. I find myself looking with fear at all my other relationships -- what if it does happen again? You can't tell me it won't, because you don't know that. It could. And the anticipation of further pain is enough to tempt me to withdraw behind walls so impenetrable I will not be hurt again.

I can't eat; I'm not hungry. I eat mindlessly, mechanically, just for something to do, to distract myself.

I can't sleep; I can't shut off my thoughts. I want to do nothing but sleep, hide under my covers and never get out.

Instead, I get up morning after morning, I slap on my together-face, I face a world that has little patience for grief, and I find myself wondering, Maybe I should never have taken the risk.

And missed all those coffees at Tim Horton's?

Missed the smell of her perfume when she hugged me?

Missed all the cards that came in the mail, covered with stickers, which always seemed to arrive at just the right time, which sought me out from behind my walls, and dared me to trust and to love?

Missed experiencing Costco for the very first time with her?

Missed her laughter, her smiles, her prayers?
Missed her passion for the Lord?

Missed the hours she spent, investing in my life, only to go back to what she coaxed me from?

Just because it hurts now?

She believed in me. She believed there was something in there, something beyond all the prickles and brick walls that was worth loving, that may have been sleeping but hadn't yet died.  She believed in me. And try as I might, no matter how desperately it hurts now, no matter how cold the wind blows or how high the snow drifts today, no matter how barren things look outside my window, there is some part of my heart that insists that spring will come again. There is laughter beyond the tears. There is joy beyond the grief. Maybe, just maybe, there is joy even IN the grief. Maybe there is joy in the grief because hope refuses to die, and because to feel grief, as terribly as it hurts, is better than to feel nothing at all. To feel grief means I have felt joy - and love, and I don't want that to sleep in my memory. I don't want to forget spring.

I miss her. Oh, God, how I miss her.

The thought drifts through my head, If I had never met her, I would have never loved her. She would never have loved me. And that causes a pain far greater than the grief I feel now. To have never loved her? To have never known she loved me? That would have left me in a a Narnian-like, cursed "Always winter and never Christmas."

But I did meet her. Thankfully, in God's great providence, I did meet her. The curse was broken. I cannot go back. I cannot now "not love". He used her to wake my heart. I will not live in constant fear of it happening again, (though it might) because every winter of grief marks the end of a wonderful spring of renewal, a summer of growth, and a fall of harvest, and every winter of grief will be broken by a new spring. Some winters seem to come too early -- who wants snow in mid-November? Some winters seem to last too long -- late-April blizzards are so disheartening. Some winters are deep and cold and it seems we are constantly digging out from wave after wave of snowstorms. But the curse is broken. Spring will come. Fear must melt. Hope must live. Love must live.

"A winter's day

In a deep and dark December."

But the curse is broken. Christmas is coming. And the memory of spring breezes thaws my heart.

I am not alone.

And it's ok to cry.

Mere Academics

I read an article in the newspaper today that got me thinking. It was about a researcher who suggested that there is evidence to suggest that the Ebola virus may be airborne, and on the off-chance that it is, those who are caring for Ebola patients should be wearing full respirators rather than just face masks. His suggestion was soundly refuted by a chief medical officer who said, "Besides, there likely aren’t enough respirators to go around, something an academic . . . doesn’t need to consider . . . . Researchers have the academic luxury of making comments that don’t have an impact in the real world." (Quote from LFP, October 15, 2014)

I'm not going to talk about Ebola. There are plenty of people who know far more about that than I do. I'm not going to talk about whether or not health-care workers should be wearing respirators. I have no clue. But I am interested in the intersection between "researchers and academics" and "the real world".

I work in an academic setting. I have even been called an "academic" and a "theologian". And I have been repeatedly puzzled by the insinuation that there is this enormous divide between "academics" and "the real world". Somehow, academia is fine for pie-in-the-sky, ivory tower dreaming, and academics and theologians are out of touch with reality and not quite "normal". They have the "luxury of making comments that don't have an impact in the real world". Really? Is that what people think? Do they really think that I and other "academics" (I hate the very term) go around saying stuff just for the sake of hearing our own voice and to show off how smart and wonderful we are, without thinking about the practical implications? Do they really think that being an academic somehow protects us from the common lot of humanity, that somehow our world of ideas and research insulates us from love and heartbreak, joy and heartache, the wonder of a sunset, the delight of a child's laughter, sickness and health, birth and death, fear and courage? Do they really think that the world goes by us like a stream around a rock while the rest of humanity is carried along like sticks in the current? That we'll be safe in our ivory towers from things like loss and pain and cancer and Ebola and death?

Because that's a pile of crock. Which is an entirely non-academic way to say that I am as human as anyone else who walks this earth. If I'm ever tempted to hide in an ivory tower (as others might hide in booze, drugs, sex, work, shopping, TV shows, romance novels, approval, family, etc) life has a way of knocking down the tower and burying me under the rubble.

I love ideas. I have thought about Trinity and divinity, about ecclesiology and eschatology, about the finer points of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. I have wrestled with the sovereignty of God, the will of God, free will, and the problem of evil. I have thought about heaven, the new heavens and the new earth, resurrection and death. I have a new stick to chew on pretty much every week. It is honest, deep, and academic wrestling. I have read the Word, and words about the Word. I have learned hard truths, truths which are difficult to live. But just because they are difficult to live, just because sometimes the ideas that I think make me feel bad or stretch me out of my comfort zone, does that make them luxurious ideas that don't have an impact in the real world?

I don't think so. I think it makes me more acutely aware of the complexities of this wonderful, horrible world in which we live. It makes me responsible to line the real world up to the truth, however complicated that might end up being. I love ideas. I love thinking about them and discussing them. But a big part of what I love about them is exploring their implications. I live with those implications as certainly as anyone else who draws breath. Perhaps, dare I say it, I live with them more, because I have thought about them hard.

So don't talk to me about an ivory tower, about "living in the real world", or about academic luxury. It's a stack of nonsense. The logic goes like this: Ebola might be airborne, so we should use respirators, but we don't have enough respirators, therefore Ebola probably isn't airborne. Or maybe this: God calls us to sexual purity, so we shouldn't have sex before marriage, but I really love the guy, therefore when God calls us to sexual purity, he wasn't talking about sex before marriage. Or this: God is totally sovereign, so everything that happens is in his control, but I can't accept that he was in control of this horrible thing that happened to me, so maybe he's only sovereign over the good stuff and not the bad stuff. We cannot talk about academic ideas without understanding and living with the implications. It betrays the very academic integrity we cherish. It is not academic luxury to discuss complicated or uncomfortable ideas. What is luxury (or downright foolishness) is to discount the ideas as mere academics just because the implications are hard to implement.

There is no such thing, at least in my world, as mere academics. There is a such thing as ordinary people who live fully, love deeply, hurt profoundly, cry and laugh with liberty, who think about and discuss big ideas with life-changing implications, and who then seek diligently to make those implications a reality in their lives, no matter how tough that is. From there, they teach those ideas to others, so that they, too, can fully enter into the mix and mess of following Jesus faithfully in an unfaithful world.

On the off-chance that the researcher was right, and I had to care for an Ebola patient, I would want a respirator.

Wouldn't you?