A Different Kind of Christmas Season

4:19 PM - Nov. 26, 2005 - Add to the Wildness

I know this year will be different than any before, for several reasons. One of the main ones is that I’m watching my friends struggle to avoid bankruptcy and losing their homeschool. Theirs is a painful story. He came back from a tour of duty with PTSD after the guy in the next bunk committed suicide. They tried to find help. The church told them to smile and quit making a fuss, and please don’t have problems in our presence as it’s bad for our image. They ended up separating for awhile. They are still trying to recover financially. It may not happen. Merry Christmas. It makes our usual holiday goals look kind of hollow. How about keeping a family under a roof during a Canadian winter? How about letting a Mom keep the dreams and the love and time she’s invested in building a life (pretty much on her own for a long time) for her children?

Since neither side of our family can have everyone together for Christmas Day, we’re contemplating spending the evening in the city, serving a turkey dinner at the soup kitchen. Joyce, one of the mainstays there, tells me that Christmas is terribly difficult for a lot of "their" people – our people. It is alone, depressing, hopeless, a time when all the contrasts between the urban myth of what life is "supposed" to be and what it really is, come front and center. People die at their own hands every Christmas.

I want to take a turkey to town. I wish I could win the lottery and tell my friends it’s okay, it’s all paid for, just go get on with your lives. To tell him, yeah, it’s been messy and I know it still is. But you’ve turned to God, and the mistakes are under the blood of Jesus Christ. They’re gone forever. Now we just focus on healing the pain. To tell her, God hasn’t left. I’ve seen your tears, and I remember. And if I remember, how much more the Heavenly Father who seems to have walked away from you right now.

Can a mother forget her nursing child? Even these may forget, but the Lord your God will not forget you.

Merry Christmas season.