Christmas Heartache
“Tis the season to be jolly…
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”
Please don’t stop reading. I promise this isn’t a plea for you to put on your happy face and come out and join the party. In fact, let’s start with a different couple of lesser-known Christmas carols. Please take the time to watch and listen to these two powerful songs.
Do they speak to you? Are the lyrics more meaningful to you than the opening lines of this piece of writing this year? Forevermore? Do they bring tears to your eyes? Can you connect with the deep sadness in the people’s eyes in the second video?
When I was 18 years old, my 13 year old sister was killed on her bike when a car hit her. Ever since that moment, my life was forever changed. She was my best friend. She knew me like nobody else. When her life was vanquished, my childhood ended in that instant. Carefree days and innocence were a thing of the past, and I was forced in that second to bear the heavy burden of loss and unfathomable pain.
I remember going to camp as a kid, and I remember carrying around inside me what I thought of as a “lump of loneliness”. Yes, there was fun around me - swimming, arts and crafts, quiet rest times, Capture the Flag, fun music, worship, laughter, relationships - but even amidst the fun, I had a persistent aching of a homesick homebody. I missed my bedroom, my solitude, my family, my routine, the familiar… and so even when there was happiness almost floating in the air around me, I did not have complete joy in those moments as something was missing. Sometimes that lump would swell so much it was all that I could think about, and I would cry.
That sense of a lump inside me threatening to force the tears to begin flowing only increased after August 23, 1994, when my Emily made her way to her eternal home and left me here in the earthly environment we had shared as sisters. I sometimes compare her death to a wound or an amputation. Do people continue to function in spite of injuries or losses of limbs? Yes… mostly… sometimes. But life is different. Forever changed. There is a constant scar of sadness that never quite heals and can be ripped open easily and unexpectedly by a particular word, memory, song, sight, or scent.
Christmas only amplifies the ache and the loneliness. There’s so many kinds of losses and hurts that rise up within us, particularly and obstinately when we know we “should be” happy. I would think it’s kind of like the feelings of someone who was happily married once upon a time and didn’t get his or her “happily ever after” going to a wedding and watching a new couple earnestly speak their vows. Perhaps the witness’ marriage dissolved in a painful divorce or maybe one of the spouses passed away. But for whatever reason, things didn’t become a part of the story that person was hoping to write. And inside that man or woman, that lump of loneliness for what might have been begins to swell painfully.
Is there a solution? Unfortunately, like so many things in life, there really isn’t a three-step way to fix the undeniable fact that Christmas is a hard time of year for many people. Acknowledging and allowing all sorts of emotions would definitely be a step in the right direction. Changing our expectations of others and giving room for pain to sit with us in our wrapping paper littered living rooms does not overshadow the reason for Christmas and celebration. In fact, it’s all a part of the narrative: Jesus’ entrance into our broken and hurting world allows us to better see the hope and the promise there because there we have intimately understood the need for His participation in our history, when we see the pain, and the fragility of things on earth through our own experiences. Sometimes the tears in our eyes and hearts act like a prism allowing us to see God’s story more clearly.
We also need to remember that the “lumps of loneliness” that we experience throughout our lives in various situations can shine a light on the truth that this is not our home. When we experience those aches that swell until we’re not sure how we can stand them, we must acknowledge that our souls are longing for a place of perfection, and that place is Heaven. In our heavenly home, that lump will disintegrate completely and no longer bother us or affect us at all anymore! That beautiful promise can make me smile even when my face is blotchy and tear-stained because I long for the time when “God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world”, as Robert Browning had his character declare in his play Pippa Passes. We just have to remind ourselves that this world is referring to the new earth, not our current weary one.
This Christmas, don’t feel like you or the people around you need to act like the people in Rexulti commercials for depression medication:
There’s no need to pretend life is fine and dandy all the time. Allow people to cry, to hurt, to tear up, to be quiet, to reflect, and to be real. These feelings too as well as the moments of melancholy that inevitably arrive should be allowed to be a part of Christmas - not just the jolly and merry. Blessings to your heart wherever you are this year emotionally as you observe Christmas. May those of you who have had a recent loss in particular feel God’s empathetic presence in your heart this year.