Her eyes are like my favorite dark chocolate. Her hair is as black as her mama’s. Her skin, bequeathed to her by her grandmother, is Puerto Rican olive. She is a beautiful woman. Even with tears brimming and chin quivering.
I’ve known her since she was in junior high. Her mama is my closest friend. The woman knows all my secrets. She is one of less than five people on this earth that I know I can trust in any situation. Her daughter calls me mama. I claim her as one of my own.
Thus, her tears break my heart.
This Christmas sucks for her. Never one to care much in the first place, she thought it would be no big deal. However, broken hearts demand attention on days we try to ignore.
She sat across from me. Drinking a canned margarita and staring out over the 10 acres she just bought. She pressed her lips together and tried to control the disappointment swelling in her chest. I stared with her across the property. Her ranch will one day house gymkhana, roping and other horse related sports. She wants to help kids, who don’t have horse space, get the chance to ride. She is going to open her land to them, for their dreams matter to her. In fact, many people matter to her. She gives unabashedly, loves unrelentingly, and forgives repeatedly.
She looks like my Jesus.
Like Jesus, her heart gets broken over and over and over. I get the pain of that. People are my whole world. Forty years of ministry brings innumerable broken hearts. People hurt people. It is the way of this sin-stained world. When we choose to love anyone, we will eventually be left with a wounded of some kind. The reality of human imperfection makes it inevitable. Even so, it is brutally painful, and the American holiday season makes it almost unbearable.
Christmas is supposed to be the celebration of the birth of a Savior. However, all too often it is the celebration of a pocketbook; or a bottle of Scotch; or a family at war; or a business obligation; or the demand to reciprocate every action born under the banner titled “Holiday Spirit.” It is often brutal, especially to those of us who have been crushed, are being crushed, or will be crushed at some point in the midst of the “holy-day season.” Rather than excitement and anticipation, broken hearted people feel loneliness and longing. Life has not given them Norman Rockwell’s version of Christmas, but rather,
the bleak, black and white version of Salvador Dali—a twisted account of what should be, but really can’t be, because there is something missing, or misshapen, or maddeningly wrong with the contents.
My sweet girl thought this would be a wonderful Holiday with an honest, hardworking, godly partner. Her hopes had been raised to heights above her wildest expectations, only to have him drop her off a cliff and leave her to tumble, bruised and bloody, to the bottom. He sauntered away, ignoring the pain he caused and the wildly wicked ways in which he broke her heart.
I get it. Just 5 months ago, I, too, was thrown over a cliff, my own dreams of an honest relationship full of integrity and love, were shattered by deceit and lies and a lack of ethics like none I have ever experienced. Here is the thing though, after one has landed at the bottom, it is near impossible to see any way back up. The wounds demand triage attention that dissipates any idea that one would have the ability to climb.
And then the demands of Christmas come tumbling over the cliff and drop relentlessly like led weights. Weak and worn, with tear-streaked faces and bloody hearts, the wounded are unable to meet those demands. Many end up abhorring the day and wishing it was March 6 or May 15 or August 8. Would that it was any day but December 25.
Some, like me, simply drop out of the whole thing.
This year I skipped Christmas. I was not lonely, hurting, angry or unable. I was busy and tired. I did not have the energy to do all the expected duties. Ministry is hard work, and starting a ministry is harder work. So, I told everyone I love I am skipping it this year. I wished them the best on their holiday, and I set about doing something else.
And that is how I ended up on my girl’s new back deck. She needed someone to put her house together. She had boxes galore. Mama Penni came to the rescue. I am made for making a house look fabulous. I am also made for letting the wounded be where they are without making a demand that they climb back up that cliff so that I don’t have to deal with the uncomfortableness of their pain.
So, I made her new house look great for her. We did not talk about Christmas. There were no gifts to exchange. We ate spaghetti. We bought Jesus a birthday cake and I told the story of his birth to my beloved granddaughter. After all, Christmas is a birthday and what is a birthday without cake? It was the only Christmassy thing we did. Happy Birthday Jesus.
We watched a good movie that made us cry. Then we went to bed.
It was perfect, holy even.
Wait, you think us strange? Ok. I can live with that. You can’t imagine not having all the stuff that tradition says Christmas requires? I can also live with that. You think us bah-humbug? Maybe we are. But I can tell you this. My girl has cried enough tears and did not need Christmas to add more. So, we held it at a ‘bottom of the cliff’ level. Like it or not, that was a good safe place to be. We left the holiday without continuing to believe Christmas sucks.
I think this is where Jesus makes himself the most known. He did not have to wade though insurmountable packages and overspending; step past the table laden with food that will be half tossed in the trash in 48 hours; or over the possibility of immense drinking and the often loud arguments; to take his place at his birthday celebration.
It was marvelous, cheap, fun and utterly safe. No expectations to meet. No crazy relatives to navigate. No huge cleanup after dinner and no trying to deal with all the trash that comes with the opening of copious amounts of presents.
Now, before you freak out and say your Christmas is not like any of that, let me give you credit. If so, I commend you. If you manage love and kindness and not dipping your wallet into the financial foolishness of endless gift buying, kudos to you you. Please lay down your offense as you realize that you are a rarity. Be thankful I am not writing about you, but the many other people of the world who are not like you.
We chose to skip everything but the cake, and you know what? The Savior came and made himself known us. We felt his love and his commitment and the truth of his care for the wounded heart was ever so clear. I had the most peaceful Christmas I have had in years.
Maybe this resonates with you. If so, I get it. So does my girl. So does Jesus.
If you are at the bottom of the cliff, He (and we) will meet you there.
Yorumlar