Unhappy Holidays
Blogs I’ve been reading are oozing with enthusiasm, emotion, and eager anticipation for the holiday season. Descriptions of fireplaces and hot cocoa, plaids and sequins, lights and laughter are so vivid they feel like an attempt to scatter glitter from every screen. Be warm, be filled, be happy. Let the dazzling delights of the season satisfy.
But for many of us the holiday sparkles only magnify our loneliness. Our losses. There has been a cloud of discouragement over my world this fall. Like a moving cold front with periodic breaks in the cloud deck or dark stretches with thick rolling billows, it has changed from day to day, but the external circumstances in my world have not.
I have a friend whose son and daughter-in-law are divorcing. Their situation is unbelievably complicated by a beyond-healing medical condition. How does my friend find joy in this season?
My daughter has lots of friends, godly young women, who yearn to be married but are waiting again this Christmas for that long-prayed-for but still-unanswered prayer. Yes, they know marriage is not the answer for all, but they also know Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The ever-present images of happy children opening gifts with ever-smiling moms and dads is a constant reminder to these delightful young women of their aloneness.
Another young friend will walk through this season knowing her unborn baby has a heart defect.
It seems our prayer list of dear friends, family members, and many acquaintances is littered with challenging medical issues and broken relationships. Where do they and we find joy in this season and beyond?
In God alone
One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 33:6: “And he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.” No matter the current national or world crisis, and though our eyes constantly look for the outward to satisfy, to fill us, to bring us joy, it is only found within. David said, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Psalm 51:12). He knew the source was in God alone.
Joni Eareckson Tada gives me the perspective I need. Since a diving accident in 1967, she has been bound to a wheelchair and to the constant need of others caring for her physical needs.
She said in an interview, “In the morning when I wake up, I know they’ll be coming into my bedroom to give me a bed bath, to do my toileting routines, pull up my pants, put me in the wheelchair, feed me my breakfast, and push me out the front door. I lie there thinking, Oh God, I cannot face this. I’m so tired of this routine. I don’t know how I’m going to make it to lunchtime. But I can do all things through You as You strengthen me. Can I please borrow Your smile? I need it.”
Do you tear up just reading those words? I do. Do you shake your head incredulously at her impossible-to-comprehend circumstances? I do. And I marvel.
She went on to say, “I make myself be happy. I make myself sing because I have to. I choose the Holy Spirit’s help because I don’t want to go down that grim, dark path to depression any more. Cast yourself at the mercy of God and let Him show up through your weaknesses because that is what He promises.”
Her faith stuns me. But God eagerly waits to meet us when we come with our losses and broken hearts to His welcoming embrace. That is where joy is found in the holiday season—in a real, vital, alive relationship with Jesus Christ who willingly shrunk His deity to a single cell to then be born on Christmas Day for our sake.
Come to Him. Give Him your broken heart. Adore Him always as Christ the Lord. Then sing for joy that He has not abandoned us. Not for a moment will He forsake thee or me!
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