As I sat to compose my thoughts today—which sounds as if thoughts handled that way come out neatly organized on crisp lines of music—the composition fell off my music stand, so to speak. What wind blew through to cause such disruption? The realization that this (the year that shall not be named) is not the weirdest, hardest, most bizarre, or even remotely the scariest Christmas ever. Far from it.
Other contenders:
- The year my mother lay dying. Gifts for her weren’t part of the holiday celebration anymore. She’d long before given away or otherwise ridded herself of all her earthly goods in preparation for her trip Home. We lavished our presence on her and held her frail frame, but laughter during the holidays came hard that year.
- The year my grandkids’ mother didn’t show up for our family Christmas. No one knew where she was. Her addictions had drawn her to a party somewhere. She hadn’t yet come home. Unreachable. Absent. Heartbreaking. And she missed the highlight of the celebration when, at six, her daughter chose that gathering to announce she’d decided to give her heart to Jesus.
- The year my husband lay recuperating from a broken back and femur, the house still smelled like smoke from the kitchen fire, and my brother-in-law was spending his first strangest of Christmases in prison.
- The year my father-in-law died suddenly just before Christmas and the decision was made to delay his funeral until the world wasn’t so “festive.” Flying to Florida post-holiday for a funeral is bizarre when the rest of the plane full of people is heading for beaches and amusement parks.
- The year I was ten months old and my dad was halfway around the world in Marine fatigues, holding orphaned Korean children, vicariously experiencing what it must be like to hold a firstborn child.
- Oh, and the year Jesus was born. Mary and Joseph, alone in an over-crowded city. No comforts to mask her pain. No friend or midwife to assist. The world outside the stable in upheaval of political and social unrest. The strangest place for a babe to be born—the filthy floor of a barn. Did Joseph make a good birthing coach? Or did he pace outside the stable doors until he heard the infant’s first cry? The weirdest “It’s a boy!” visitors—complete strangers, shepherds, who were only there because they’d heard voices and saw a piercing light in the night sky.
The curiosities, unknowns, uncertainties of the first Christmas (or rather, the reason we mark a date in December to celebrate the holy birth) fill us with courage and hope, a motivation to let JOY pierce through and override our 2020 concerns, our lifetime of concerns.
Jesus drew His first earthly breath in an air of uncertainty and weirdness. It’s His breath that now fills our lungs and feeds our joy as we navigate a Christmas—and a world—not all that different from the one that greeted Him.
Cynthia Ruchti is an author and speaker whose tagline is: I can’t unravel, I’m hemmed in Hope. That theme finds its way into every book she writes, fiction or nonfiction, including her recent novel, Afraid of the Light. She and her grade-school sweetheart husband live in the heart of Wisconsin, not far from the three children and six (to date) grandchildren. cynthiaruchti.com or hemmedinhope.com
