2018, A Christmas Letter (Essay)

The tension of this month had me in tears a year ago and when the day that we set aside to celebrate the beginning of the savior's story came and went I realized I had lost myself in the tension, lost that Baby in the midst of the enormous amount of people pleasing and schedule managing and gift purchasing the holiday seems to demand.  I promised myself and God that this year I would do better, would be more protective of our time and our energy and our focus.

The thing about making promises to a God who hears is that He is faithful in remaking the parts of us that need to adjust, faithful in killing the parts of us that are in the way of quiet, holy living.  A year ago I was carrying a baby girl and in the spring we focused hard on our baby boy.  Nate and I taught and poured and exhausted ourselves on the sacred work of raising a small soul.   And in one beautiful June day our daughter was born and our baby boy became simply a boy.  I was caught off guard by heavy moments: the look of uncertainty in his eyes when I held his sister.  The way he clung to Nate for months (still does).  My own feeling of betrayal every time I put him down to pick her up, every time I hushed him, told him to still.  The way he suddenly aged, grew large and boyish and more pensive.  There is heartbreak here in this miracle space.

I was determined to solve (absolve?), push out of the dizzy-with-love, dizzy-with-guilt season of summer and so we still went to the beach, we still walked to the park and to the dock and to afternoon ice creams.  And then I found myself stumble walking from the pediatrician's office to the emergency room, from the emergency room to the helicopter on the roof, from that roof to another roof where we spent days with our weeks old baby and her monitors, tubes, cords, nurses, amazing doctor.  The tension so thick it was hard to breathe, so thick it felt wrong to do more than breathe.  My prayers shortened Keep us,  Prepare us.  Prepare us?  I hoped that if God asked me to go to the wilderness I would be able to walk without falling, eyes still on Him.  I hoped I would be able to walk.  Passages heavy with ink and tears and prayers from wildernesses past flew at me, preached to me when the days and the nights blurred with the beeping, dosing, pleading.

We came home.  Three beautiful words.  We came home a week later and everything stunned me. Having two babies fight over lap space: stunning, his two year old birthday with all of our dearest people: stunning, her constant wake ups and his incessant need for snuggles: stunning.  The ragged parts of this season seemed to soften, seemed to fill with sacred weight and what a gift this all is.  What a wonderful, painful, undeserved gift.  And do you see what He is doing?

A year ago I was in tears over the tension and now, a year later, it is still here but I am learning to embrace it.  Embrace is too small, too neat.  I am learning, I am trying, I am desperate to hold it all-- the wilderness parts and the mountain top parts the imperfect parts and the loud parts and the whispering parts.   Because what is the gospel if not a story of tension?  A baby born to die.  A wooden manger and the wooden cross.  God as man.  God as man for love of man.  The greatest tension I will probably ever know: a holy, loving God pursuing me-- a fleeing, prickly sinner.  And so this year I am praying short prayers often, loving ragged things, thanking the God-man who cradles me in the tension.