“The holidays are a really emotional time where people have real sentimental, vulnerable feelings about either the holidays that were, or sometimes, the wish for the holidays that never were that they wish could have been.” -Dr. John Townsend
There’s always something that rumbles around my heart this time of year. And until I read the words above, I could never unscramble the right string of words that made sense of the restlessness. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the holiday season; I’m a pedal-to-the-medal, get-it-done, self-proclaimed holiday hustler when it comes to this time of year. My shopping list is organized via Google spreadsheet, my cookie list has been locked and loaded since May, and my forever-evolving Christmas bucket list is filled with holiday parades, fireworks, light tours and Christmas movies. If I could build myself my own little world, it would be one that’s filled with twinkling lights, sugar cookies, appetizer trays and random acts of kindness. I love Christmas.
But just below the surface, buried somewhere between a space I recognize and a space I pretend isn’t there, there’s a stirring of sadness that interjects itself in the middle of the planning, the present wrapping and the parties. It surfaces when I least expect it to—when I hear Christmas music at the mall, when I watch people open presents, when I walk into a quiet church with a Poinsettia-filled altar. Do you know what I crave most during the holidays? Normalcy. I crave normalcy. I crave traditions and togetherness and wholeness. And sometimes my Christmases have fallen short of that. During the time of year when the world is pushing joy, peace and celebration into my heart, I have felt everything but. When everyone else is sighing over outdated traditions and having to travel too far to be together, I’ve seen my family who’s still struggling to find footing for moments like these when there’s so much to celebrate and so much to be thankful for, and yet…the loss has been so profound, the year has been so long, and the exhaustion has been all too real.
In pursuit of normality, I have a tendency to see Christmas as a platform to perform and prove rather than as a holiday to celebrate and honor. There are a few holes in my Christmas where sadness and loneliness start to leak in, and I find myself running around frantically patching those holes with potlucks and Pandora holiday stations and Peanut Butter Blossoms. I’m desperate for ordinary during the holidays. Maybe you, too? I have been guilty of using the Christmas chaos as a tool to numb and avoid, and regretfully, by going to great lengths to keep the broken parts from surfacing, I didn’t clear the way for the good things to find their way in.
Is that where you are this holiday season? Are you putting on your best brave face and trying to shove the singleness, the grief, infertility, the miscarriage, the addiction or the debt into a box that you’re hoping will hold the messiness in until the holidays pass? Maybe you’re like me, seeking refuge in the busyness, hoping to trick yourself into feeling the joy that the season demands. I know what it’s like to feel that this time of a year is an unrelenting reminder of what you’ve lost or don’t have. I know what it’s like to sit around the table and think “if only” or desperately wish you could go back to the Christmas before when it all felt familiar and ordinary. I know what it’s like to be surrounded by family or friends and feel homesick, out of place and lonely.
If this is where you find yourself as you read this, then I want to say something to you right now. Don’t buy into the lie that you have to fake it ’til you make it. I know the voices of the season are so loud right now telling you how you should feel and how you should celebrate. And I want you to know that you can step out from behind the curtain. The people who love you best don’t need your performance—they need your authenticity and vulnerability because those two things are the paths forward to courage, connection and new seasons.
This Christmas, when everyone else is fixated on a story about a manger, I keep going back to a story about a cross. Before Jesus was sent to the cross, there was a big celebration. You know it as the Last Supper. It was a extravagant meal to celebrate Passover and gathered around the table were Jesus’ closest friends. What strikes me most about this story is that Jesus wasn’t running around acting like the life of the party. There’s nothing in this story that says he was running around hugging his friends and making sure their wine glasses were full.
Instead, Jesus got real honest about what he was dealing with in his heart. He told his friends about what he knew was ahead for him. He told his friends he knew someone that he loved would betray him and that another one of his closest friends would pretend not to even know him. In the days after, the Bible paints a picture of how Jesus handled what was going on in his heart. He isolated himself. He withdrew from his friends. He had real and raw conversations with God. He cried. He sweat drops of blood. Jesus was in pain and he never pretended like he wasn’t. But in the middle of it, in the worst of it, Jesus kept talking about Sunday. He knew that to get to Sunday, he had to go through Friday.
I hope that the words that I write here give you full permission to be honest with yourself and the people you’re surrounded by about where you’re at right now. Trust your people that they can still love the broken you. The empty you. The single you. The childless you. The divorced you. The addicted you. The screw-up you. The broke you. The have-nothing-left-to-give you.
There’s a stillness and a simplicity that’s waiting to be found in this season. Let your heart have a voice this Christmas. If it’s telling you that it’s in pain or tired, don’t drown it out with plans and parties or force it into celebration when it’s craving stillness. There will be other Christmases to come when your heart is so full, you can hardly stand it. New seasons, new chapters, and new beginnings will find their way to you. Your Sunday is coming.