Finding Peace When Christmas Doesn’t Feel Normal: Brian & Jen Goins

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FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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Finding Peace When Christmas Doesn’t Feel Normal

Guests:Brian & Jen Goins

From the series:Finding Peace When Christmas Doesn’t Feel Normal (Day 1 of 1)

Air date:December 12, 2024

Brian:Christmas movies are big. We were talking about that, just even thinking about Home Alone. I didn’t realize it until this year that movie really isn’t about Kevin. It’s about the old guy, the guy that was down the road. The whole movie was really leading up to this spot where he’s in church and he wants to be with his family, but he can’t; that he’s estranged from his son. I just think there’s a lot of families that are probably like that; that are home alone.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave: So Christmas is in a couple of weeks. I know it’s one of your favorite holidays of the year.

Ann: I love Christmas, but I also know Christmas can be hard. I know some of you are pumped out of your minds and your kids, if you have little kids, they are ecstatic. They’re not even sleeping at night because they’re so excited. But we also know that there are some people that like this is going to be a really hard Christmas because maybe they’ve lost someone they love. You’ve gone through some really difficult circumstances possibly.

And talk about hard Christmases. I’m thinking you’ve had, as a little boy, one of the hardest Christmases.

Dave:Yeah, we can talk about that in a minute. I want to introduce our guests. We’re going to talk about hard things. So we brought the Goins in. Let’s talk about hard.

Brian:We’re familiar with hard things, I guess.

Dave:No, we’ve got Brian and Jen Goins in the studio, and it’s interesting as we talk about Christmas coming up, it’s different in different seasons of your family. So we’re an empty nest stage. So some of the hard is our kids aren’t there anymore. Grandkids come over and they’re gone. So that’s part of it. And some of it, you still have kids in the home, so—

Jen: Yeah, we are coming into a stage where we have two kids who are actually engaged, and so we don’t know what it’s going to look like. We’re kind of in an unknown of where they’re going to be, how are we going to work it out? We’ve gotten advice from people who say, “Oh, don’t worry about the holidays; do a summer vacation and then you can for sure have a week every summer. But the holidays, you just never know what’s going to happen.”

So we kind of are hearing echoes of that, and I’m already kind of getting sad. I’m already not looking forward to the possibilities of, we’ve had all of our kids around the tree every year for years, 20 some years and so things are about to change. And I think it’s just like every season of a family’s life. You have to get used to that change and mourn it in a certain way and get ready to grieve it, but then also figure out how you’re going to work through it and not have it be a dreary Christmas.

Ann: I’m just going to tell you one of the most depressing things that can happen, and we’ve experienced this because all of our kids have been married 15 years to 10, and things do change. You have kids that are there, kids that aren’t there, grandkids there and are not there. And then you get on social media.

Jen: Oh wow.

Ann: And you see every family with all, they’re all together and they’re so happy and you just cry, like, “I’m so sad.”

Brian: That sounds very dreary.

Ann: Very dreary.

Brian: Is that your new tradition now in the mornings after Dave gives you his one small present?

Dave: [Singing] I’m dreaming of a sad Christmas.

Ann: No, but I do remember the first time that happened when I think our middle son who lives in Colorado, and we are in Michigan for Christmas, and they couldn’t come. And so you’re thinking about them. You’re thinking about our four grandkids with them. And so when I got on social media, I’m like, “I can’t do this over the holidays.” Mother’s Day, any holiday can be super painful.

Dave:Well, I think if there’s anything I underestimated as a pastor is the heights of joy during holidays like Christmas, like Mother’s Day and the lows. They’re both there. Some are on top of the world. They’re loving it. They’ve got their kids; they’ve had a good year; they can spend money. Some of them go away for a trip. That’s the social media. “Well, they went to Europe, Switzerland for Christmas,” and we’re like, we can barely afford the tree we got hanging over there.

Jen: Yeah; or you, living in Michigan where it’s freezing and someone, our friends always are like, “We’re going to Mexico and the Caribbean.” And you’re like, “Wow, must be nice.”

Dave:Yeah. But I think for me, what I underestimated is we usually planned as every pastor in church does an extravagant weekend service for whatever day it was. And there’d be, I’m not kidding, we would do 30 services. It was a big church, so a lot of people come in. A lot of non-church people come in, so it’s a big deal. And we spent a lot of money, so we’re pretty excited.

But I would feel in the room, and I’m talking, I’m doing 15 sermons, so I feel this. I feel like people walking in real excited. And you could see sometimes, standing on stage while you’re preaching, there are people crying. They’re going through something, and you can feel like the holidays have a way of tapping into an emotion that’s maybe dormant for the last several months. But now, “It’s my first Christmas without my spouse,” or “My first Christmas without a son or a daughter.” Maybe they went to college; maybe they passed. Maybe I lost my job this year. I mean, there’s so many things going on and people will say holidays can be the highest rates of depression.

And so as a pastor for one, you had to realize that walking up, I can’t just be, “Isn’t this awesome?” I can. It is. It’s the birth of Jesus. It’s the greatest story in the world but understanding there are people going through real heartache right now and Jesus, that baby is their answer. But that’s the reality of Christmas.

Brian: Right.

Dave:When I was six years old, my mom and dad took me and my little brother who was five—you talk about picturesque: snow falling, New Jersey night, beautiful December night—we go get baptized as little boys with my mom and dad and my two brothers and sister who are 10, 12, 13 years older than me—come back to the house and it’s a mansion of a house. My dad was an airline pilot; built this house on the side. So he had a home-building construction business, and he was a captain with Eastern Airlines back in the sixties.

We come back to this house and while we were gone, he had somebody—the entire living room was covered with presents. They weren’t there when we left. We’re going to have Christmas Eve, presents open. It’s not going to be tomorrow; it’s going to be tonight.

So you walk in the house after a beautiful night with your family getting baptized, walking through snowflakes, walk into the house and we’re like, [Gasp] and I’m not kidding, there’s gifts—you can’t even step in the family room. It’s a big family room. There’re gifts all over. So the biggest Christmas ever had, ever, and it was epic. I found out the next morning why. He’s leaving. Dad’s divorcing Mom, and this is our last Christmas. Of course, I didn’t know that Christmas Eve. Next morning, I was like, “Where’s Dad?” Well, we got some bad news and that’s—our life flipped in that moment.

Ann: But Dave, I’m thinking then not only was that your last Christmas as a family, I’m thinking about your mom’s next Christmas because here your mom is a divorced woman, your home, but then she lost—your brother died.

Dave: My brother died that year.

Brian: Oh man.

Ann: And now she’s divorced, and your brother’s gone. Can you imagine the pain she felt?

Dave: I mean, I can’t imagine. I experienced it as a brother then, losing my dad, losing my brother, but as a mom. He died on the week of Halloween and so that’s another time of the year my mom really was in depression. So Christmas took on a dark feeling in my house. And here’s the thing, that’s the reality for a lot of people. Maybe a different story, but they’re walking through that. You can imagine the next Christmas, the next Christmas, every Christmas for many years. I remember, “Oh yeah, this is the holiday my dad left.”

Brian:Yeah, would you actually feel that?

Dave: Yeah.

Brian: Did it ever change for you?

Dave: Yeah.

Brian: When did it start changing?

Dave: It changed when I met Ann. No, I mean—

Jen: She brings such joy.

Dave: Yeah. I mean, as I became a teenager, it was hard because then I’d have to, well, I never even thought of this until just this second. Christmas for me in my middle school, high school years was, celebrate with my mom, get on an airplane on Christmas Day that I could fly free because I’m the son of an airline pilot to Miami where he now lives with his new wife, my stepmom, and do Christmas twice. And I hated it. Number one, I’m an Ohio kid. I don’t want to go to sunshine. This is Christmas; usually we got snow and I’m all alone on a plane by myself. I remember back then the flight attendants would take special care of me because not too many kids flew by themselves back then. It’s much more common now. But I remember getting to Florida and being depressed like “This isn’t supposed to happen. I’m in two different places with two different parents.”

Ann: And think how torn your mom was too; that you were leaving.

Dave: Oh, losing me because the other siblings were gone. They’re in college and they’re married, and they’re gone.

Brian: So she’s alone.

Ann: Right.

Dave: She’s completely by herself. Again, this isn’t today about me, but this highlights this is the reality for a lot of people.

Ann: And I’m going to add one last thing is you went from that huge room full of presents to getting one present after that because you and mom didn’t have much money.

Dave:There was no money. The money was gone too.

So again, let’s talk about, okay, if you’re walking through hard times at Christmas and it isn’t something I’m super excited about, and it could be where we started earlier. It could just be my kids are gone off to new families or college and they’re not here. So it’s a lesser feeling of pain, but it’s real pain. How do you counsel somebody? How would you speak to them and say, “Okay…”—how do you help them get through the holidays?

Ann: Let’s encourage our listeners today.

Brian:Yeah, let’s do that. Yeah, I think about Ron Deal talks about this a lot with blended families that whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas, there’s always a sense of loss combined with the sense of joy. You don’t feel like you’re hitting either one of them well. I’m not really hitting the great parts about it because there’s this sense of pulling back because either I’m with my bio kids maybe, but my step kids are, they’re gone with their parents and it feels like the thing that we’ve built all year to try to blend well, now it feels fractured again. It’s just a reminder of that. Like what you were feeling where “I’m just going from one place to the next.” It’s difficult for sure.

Jen: I think that I’m glad we’re doing the show right now because you have a little bit of time to think about this. I think it can be a time where each individual, especially if you’re one who’s really going to dread it—maybe moms a little bit more would feel it, people who’ve lost someone might feel it a little bit more—that you can start now and say, “Okay, how am I going to deal with this? What’s going to be some good ways that I can handle this situation?”

I just thought of this right now. My sister, her husband passed away when they were, she was 24, 25 years old, and he took his own life. It was devastating. That was in August I think he passed away. Thanksgiving was the first big holiday after August, and I remember my sister, she had moved back in with my parents. I said, “How was Thanksgiving?” And she said, “Here’s what I did. I knew that it was going to be a hard day for me. So what I did is I got up; I cried. I wrote a letter to Chad, and I talked to the Lord, and I journaled about it. And then I knew that I really wanted to, after I had that time, that I would come out and I would try to be okay. Not that she was going to hide her feelings.

Ann: So she’s going to lament.

Jen: She’s going to lament. She’s going to take time in the morning to lament and then she’s like, but then she made a choice, which we talk a lot about. We have a choice. And she said, “I want to go out and at least when I’m with my family, when we’re having dinner, I want to just enjoy it, and I want to do my best to be happy and enjoy what I do have and be with my parents and celebrate the holiday.” But it wasn’t before she really let it all out before the Lord.

I thought it was really sweet, especially if you lost someone. She wrote a letter to that person and that really helped she said to really get that out and just tell him what she was going through that day, and “I miss you” and “I love you“ and here’s what’s happening. And so make a plan: what’s going to help you handle that day or that season a little bit better. It might not all go perfectly, but it can just be something that you can think about beforehand, so it doesn’t come up as a surprise.

Dave:Do you think that plan should involve people, community?

Brian:Absolutely.

Dave:Yeah.

Brian:Yeah, in some way.

Dave:I’m just throwing it at you because I figured you could speak to that.

Brian:I was going to say, as the pastor and we’ve pastored. We church planted as well, and so that’s the beauty of the body of Christ is that you have others that can come alongside you that can be that extended family to be that. They will never replace what was lost but I think that we should be looking out.

And for those that are in a church, are our eyes open to not just our family? I think that’s something that the listeners should hear is if you are one of those families that is, “We always look forward to Christmas,” great, and we do and it’s like, “Is it all about just you? Is that why it’s fun and enjoyable?” I’m not putting that down, but maybe we need to train our eyes just to look up a little bit and say, “Who is hurting? Who’s in my midst?”

And I was just thinking about this just even as Jen was talking about that. The power of lament is being able to connect with a God who can sympathize with us in our weaknesses; that we follow, as it says in Isaiah, a man of sorrows who’s acquainted with grief. It goes on to say, as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and people didn’t esteem him. So it’s like there’s moments of shame that you feel or hurt or pain. We have a God who walked where we walked and has felt some of those same feelings so how do we connect with him during those times?

Jen: A lot of times for people who are in a depression, the irony of telling them to go, just go be with people is very difficult because that’s what they don’t want to do. So sometimes ahead of time, like I was saying, the planning is that you have to plan. You have to say to yourself, I know on Christmas Eve, Christmas day, whatever it is, I’m probably not going to want to be with people. I need to either make arrangements now. I need to go to church on Christmas Eve. I need to, whatever it may be. I need to make sure that I am in a community; that I’m around people who care for me.

And if you don’t even have that even now, just to start thinking about: how can I start building that? Start going to a local church; get involved in that church so there’s people who know you and could offer you that love. Plan a phone call; have someone call you and check up on you. Because the irony of it is, is that you might not want to, especially if you struggle with real depression. It can be very, very difficult.

Ann: I know that we’ve watched our son who’s living in the Denver area. They aren’t always with family at Christmas time and so they’re in a church with a community where they have a lot of their friends who also aren’t around family and man, the community that they have built together at their church is phenomenal. They all have kids.

Dave:I’m jealous of their community, really.

Ann: Right?

Dave: It’s phenomenal.

Ann: And they are all together.

Dave: Great couples, great kids, great community.

Ann: They’ve created traditions together and so it helps them to not put their eyes on themselves or kind of the pain that’s come from being away. Sometimes I’m like, that family’s actually really, really healthy or maybe healthier than even our family.

Dave: That wouldn’t be hard to do. But here’s the truth. I mean, let me just stop for a second. I mean, we are about families. We’re about helping your family be healthier than our family. And just let me say this, what we do is only possible because a family like you. Your generosity to this ministry keeps allowing us to bring hope and truth to families in need.

Ann: So here’s what we want to say about this. If you’ve been blessed by FamilyLife, now’s the time just to step in and help other people experience that same blessing. You can head to FamilyLifeToday.com to give, and your support means the world to us.

Dave:Yeah, so here you go. You just go to FamilyLifeToday.com, or you can give us a call at 1-800-358-6329. Again, the number is 800-“F” as in Family, “L” as in Life, and then the word “TODAY.”

So talk about, you mentioned it earlier, you’re going to be in a different transition for your family. A lot of people listening are right where you are. Either kids are going off to college or getting married, but Christmas is going to be less or different. How are you feeling about it? How are you managing that?

Ann: What’s your plan?

Brian: Yeah, I don’t know that we have a plan. I was like, do we have to start bidding? Do we have to start? Is it going to be one of these things? I mean, did you have to do that where it’s like, okay, do you have to trade off? Do you have to call a year?

Dave: Yes.

Brian: Do you have to say, “Well, we’re going to…” “Hey, well our family this year is we’re going to go to Mexico; don’t you want to go to that?” Like we start manipulating?

Jen: That’s why we live in Florida. We figure if we live in Florida, they’ll come, right. Especially because our daughter’s thinking about living in Philadelphia. Who knows where other kids will end up, but we’re like, we better stay in Florida. It’s very attractive in December when every place else—my family is from Montana, so they all want to come. I’m like, yes, at least we have Florida.

Dave: I think we’ve found that it doesn’t matter what we think or want, they’re going to do whatever they want.

Ann: We have actually said to our kids, especially because we have boys, and I know that every family’s different, where I told the boys, and our daughters-in-law, “You guys go wherever you need to go first. I can understand as a daughter, you want to be with your family,” and the sons too, but we usually say, “We’ll do whatever and it doesn’t have to be on that day. If you choose to come later or you can’t, we get it, but we’re flexible with anything.”

Brian: Are you saying that you’re not feeling that at that moment? You’re just saying because it’s true.

Ann: I mean feeling, I want them to be with us, but I also—

Dave: Oh, it’s hard to say because you want Christmas to be like it was: three boys around the thing and now their girlfriends and now their wives. That’s what you want—

Ann: Totally.

Dave: —the whole family room full of your family but yeah, we say it with grief almost like, “Hey, do what you want to do.”

Brian: I just feel the sadness.

Dave: Inside we’re like, “We’re hoping they’ll say…” One time the two boys and their wives slept in their old childhood bedrooms upstairs. They said, “We’re going to sleep overnight, Christmas Eve.”

Ann: That was one of my favorite Christmases. You guys will get this because they still had a brother in high school and the other two were married, and the three boys used to sleep in the same bedroom, and so they slept as couples. And then the high schooler—I know!

Dave:It’s like a slumber party on the floor, on mattresses everywhere.

Ann: I have a picture of it, but it was like, perfect. “Look at you guys sacrificing.”

Dave: But I tell you this, when that happened, I don’t know how many years ago it was, there was a part of me thought, “This is our future. This is so cool.” It happened one time. And they’re like, “Yeah, we’re not doing that again. And by the way, we’re not even going to be there until two. We’re going to her…” And that’s where it got hard.

Jen: That’s what’s going to be really hard for me?

Dave: We can’t control it.

Brian: I feel like your parents and my parents have modeled that pretty well.

Dave: Have they?

Jen: So well.

Brian:That they have really shown us really a sense of, “We’re not going to control. We’re not going to manipulate. We’re not going to say, ‘Oh, when are you going to come see,’ drop those things.” And I feel like, I don’t feel like we’ve realized how good we’ve had it. Because I think I have expectations about, “Well, of course my kids are going to want to be at our house.”

Ann: But you’ve seen a good example.

Brian:We’ve seen a good example.

Jen: We’ve seen really good—I don’t think our parents have made us feel guilty ever about choices that we’ve made or things like that. Also, we’ve lived in the same town as one set of parents and not the other. We are actually facing that with our daughter. She’s probably going to live in the town where her husband is from with his family and so I’m thinking, I’m looking at my parents, “How did you do that?” I’m thinking I’ll be jealous, and it’ll be hard.

Ann: And even harder with grandkids.

Jen: Exactly.

Brian:Didn’t you ask your mom that one time?—about how was it for her?

Jen: Yeah, and she said it was hard, but she has never made us feel guilty. She said, “We were always grateful for the time that we get and when we’re there, we want to be with you.” And so we understand that now a lot better, so we don’t want to be the family that causes the guilt or the frustration. We want to be like you guys. I was just saying “Whatever you need to do,” and we’ll be happy with it or we’re going to let it go.

Brian: And maybe we’ll start your tradition. I heard you have a great new Christmas tradition that you’re doing.

Dave:We go to Christmas movies—

Ann: Or just any movies, you know there’s blockbusters.

Dave: —all by ourselves. We get the big popcorn, and everybody’s gone. I mean, it’s funny to say that, but yeah, by about noon or one o’clock—

Ann: Yeah, they’re all going to the other family.

Dave:They’re all going to the next one. Usually we get them first and then they go, and then we sit there literally like, “Oh, what are we going to do?” We’re like, there’s some good movies out. And by the way, the theaters are packed.

Ann: They are packed, it’s surprising.

Dave: Everybody’s going, so we do that.

Brian: Oh, Christmas movies are big. We were talking about that, just even thinking about Home Alone. I didn’t realize it until this year, watching it again this past Christmas and just realizing that movie really isn’t about Kevin. It’s not really about him. It’s about the old guy, the guy that was down the road.

Dave:Marley.

Brian:Yeah, it was old man Marley, and they called him the South Bend shovel slayer. It was a rumor that he was the serial killer living down… that old guy. The whole movie was really leading up to this spot where he’s in church and he wants to be with his family, but he can’t; that he’s estranged from his son, and he just goes to be able to at least see his granddaughter. I just think there’s a lot of families that are probably like that; that are home alone; that want to be with somebody.

Dave:Isn’t it such a beautiful twist that the voice of God sort of in the movie is Kevin? Because he says to the man at church, “Well, you should be with your daughter on Christmas. That’s so wrong.” He’s like, “Well, you don’t understand.” And then I tear up every time, and I watch Home Alone probably every Christmas. I love it. But at the end, when the whole family comes back from Europe or wherever they went, Kevin’s family comes home. Kevin runs down and he looks out the window and he sees grandpa hugging his granddaughter and he looks over at him. I’m teared up right now. It’s so beautiful. It’s like that’s what you said. We thought the whole movie is about Kevin. It was like, I think the subliminal is there; that’s Christmas.

Ann: That’s the gospel. That is Jesus coming to earth so we can be reconciled with the Father. It’s the beauty, and I think too, that’s where we go that we need to remember. It’s not about the presents, not about the Christmas tree. It is about family is important, but it ultimately is Jesus. God sending His Son for us. Like whew; that’s the ultimate.

Dave: The passage that kept coming to my mind when you guys were talking is, and it’s sort of vivid for me. It’s Psalm 34. I know you’ve heard it. When I was going in for back surgery the night before I went in, I was gripped with fear. I don’t know why. It was last minute, I was like, “What am I doing? They’re going to take a sledgehammer in there, work around my spinal cord.” I just got, and I did the wrong thing. I watched the surgery. Like don’t do that.

So I’m laying in bed, and I got to get up first thing in the morning and I open Psalm 34. It’s such a beautiful passage, but one of the verses that jumps out, and this is for you if you’re going through a hard time at Christmas. Remember this, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and he saves those who are crushed in spirit.” That’s a promise. He is close to you right now, especially if you don’t feel like it because family is estranged, maybe you lost somebody really important in your life. He feels your pain. He came on this Christmas morning for that pain, and he literally saved you if you’re crushed in spirit.

And for me, it was like I felt crushed in spirit when my dad walked out. I didn’t know what the future looked like. And now I know; I have a Father. He was there and he’s there now, and he will be your Father. He’ll be your Savior through this Christmas time.

Jen: I think that’s a beautiful message to say that because even all the things, all the tips that we could give, all the “Get around family,” “Be satisfied with what you have,” “You have the family that you do have,” for someone who literally has nothing this Christmas, they do have that for sure. We can’t guarantee anything else, but we can guarantee that we can stand firm on that. And so that would be the ultimate message, I think on a hard Christmas—

Ann: Me too.

Jen: —is that we have the gospel, and we have a Father who welcomes us to the table.

Dave:That’s good. If you’d love somebody to pray for you this Christmas, here’s what you can do. Go to FamilyLife.com/Prayforme, and we will pray for you. We would love to pray for you. We’ve been there, and to have somebody that knows the pain you’re feeling pray for you, we would love to do that. And let me tell you, we are only able to even have a prayer team that prays for you because of generous donors who believe in this ministry and say, “We want to give to FamilyLife.” And let me just say, let us say, we are so thankful for you, our listeners. It’s because of you that FamilyLife can continue to share God’s truth with families around the world, but we need you to keep going.

Ann: So we’re asking if you’d consider even giving if you’ve been touched by today’s show or any of our programs. Your gift helps us reach even more families with the hope of the gospel. So you can visit FamilyLifeToday.com or feel free to call us at 800-358-6329. Again, the number is 800-“F” as in Family, “L” as in Life, and then the word “TODAY.”

Dave:Now coming up tomorrow, we’ve got Ron Deal and Gayla Grace, listen to this, talking about Christmas stress for blended families. You talk about stress, that’s it. That’s coming up tomorrow.

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