There’s nothing magical about Christmas. Now, before you start thinking of names to call me, or think me rude and depressed, yes, I love seeing lights twinkle and candles flicker. I love the season, even though I also get melancholy, even sad, and some days wish we could skip it all and jump right into the new year.
I hear others repeat that same sentiment. Life circumstances, good and bad, seem to boil over at Christmas time. We all have longings and memories that beg to steal our joy. For many of us, that battle repeats during the winter holidays. Just from what I hear from friends and know of my own experience, no matter how hard we try to avoid “the” enemy, “he” shows up … if not for months and weeks, then days at time, or for a little while.
I can fortify myself, prepare for the season and do all the recommended procedures, but the melancholy comes.
My melancholy came last night. A suspicious-looking man stood in a shadow, wearing a dark hoodie that covered most of his face. He stared at me as I walked out of the grocery store. I hurried to get in and start the car. The click of doors locking gave me a modicum of safety when the man left the shadow to walk in my direction. I turned the radio on, feeling ridiculous and recalling my husband’s request that I “stay in tonight” and do my shopping in the morning.
Christmas music from a Christian station took the edge off, and seeing the man in my rearview mirror gave me some calm, so I tried to sing along. I had a boat-load of groceries in the trunk of my car. Rain splattered on my windshield when I would rather have had snow, but that wasn’t it. Tonight was as good a night as any for melancholy.
I drove from the parking lot, wanting to sing. Instead, I began to tear. By the very first stoplight, I was crying and talking to Jesus, letting Him know how hard “all this” was on me. I can’t do it. More than nine years! Isn’t that long enough? It’s Christmas!
You see, I have a daughter—a grown-up, gave me grandchildren and then took them away—prodigal daughter. I have good reason to cry, Lord, but I want not to. Not again. Do something for me. With me. In me. I need you. The rain blurred my view, and tears blurred my vision, but I wiped my eyes with the back of my glove and turned on the wipers.
My melancholy came just that fast. Typical, and I wonder if it weren’t for the loss of relationship with my daughter and grandchildren, would melancholy come at all. This I know: The loss of that relationship appears permanent. Nine years! And it has absolutely nothing to do with the season. The season merely accentuates it. Wait! It may only have been nine years, but this is the tenth Christmas.
I did the math. I tapped out the years on the steering wheel as if being exact made a difference. That’s something I do. I wish that I’m wrong. Ten is a much bigger number when there are 364 days and nights involved between each of those Christmas’. The math is so simple it troubles me. I wish this estrangement were about forgiveness. 70 times 7 is a much smaller number so that any debt, on either or both sides, should have been fully paid by now. I can’t say what I feel when the melancholy lands on me, except that it’s heavy and it hurts, and that I can’t swallow, or breathe for a while. And there are always tears. Copious tears. It must not be about forgiveness.
Then what is it? Why are you being so cruel? My thought was half self-talk to my daughter and half prayer.
I pulled into the garage, determined that my crying would stop. Melancholy is contagious. I’m terrible at stoic, but pulled it off last night, determined not to share tears over the same old story this year, I spoke to the backside of his recliner. “Hello-oh. I’m ho-ome.”
He started to get up. “I’ve got this. Only a couple of trips. You hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I’m craving comfort soup, so I’m going to get some veggie beef soup started before I start baking. I’ll tell you when it’s ready.”
“Don’t cook for me,” he said. “I’ll make a sandwich later.”
I plopped the chopped beef into my heavy-duty, ten quart stock pot. (I paid seventy or eighty dollars for that thing twenty-five or thirty years ago, and using it makes everything taste better.)
I yelled from the pantry toward the television in the living room. “Do we have onions? I don’t see onions.”
“They weren’t on the list when I shopped on Monday.” Roger’s voice reminded me, like spouses do for each other, of another failing.
I said to myself, “No onions then.” I lit the oven to 350° and lined up the ingredients for my soup, minus the onion.
The soup hadn’t started to boil before the first batch of cookie dough was ready. The warning not to eat raw cookie dough was printed in bold on the recipe, but I scraped the bowl and licked the spoon anyway. What’s a little salmonella on top of what I’m already feeling?
I set the timer and sighed over a sink full of dirty bowls and utensils. 8-10 minutes. Long enough to wash the dishes, but not long enough to sit and rest, so I cut open a package of chocolate kisses and started unwrapping the little treats, having them ready to press into hot-from-the-oven cookies. I didn’t sneak even one of those chocolate drops. My attitude deserved the punishment.
Six dozen cookies (two dozen at a time) had my kitchen smelling like heaven, and I was feeling somewhat better. I scooped up a small bowl of soup that smelled almost as yummy and offered it to Roger.
“Too hot,” he said as he sat the bowl on his placemat. “I’ll eat it later.”
I served myself a bigger bowl and ate until all that was left was the red stain from the tomatoes. Roger’s soup sat there, still chillin’, and he sat in front of the television. Ours is an exciting life, but we can handle only so much after 7pm. Yep. That happens every year when daylight savings time robs us of daylight. Someone needs to fix that. Why should we wait until Easter to get our energy back?
I scrambled to find disposable containers with room enough for six dozen cookies, and then ran out of the heavy duty, long roll, aluminum foil needed to cover them. Uggh! There might have been more on the top shelf of the pantry, but that would require the step ladder … also in the pantry, but what a nuisance. I “made do” as my mother would say, by adding plastic wrap that rebelled and clung only where I didn’t want it to. I rolled my eyes and “rolled with the flow” as no one has said since the mid-seventies. Or is that “roll with the punches?” Look it up and let me know if you have the energy or the need to correct me. I told you this was an unmagical day.
Done. Well almost done, except the pot of soup needing to cool before filling single-serving containers with leftovers and putting them into the freezer. Wow! Five meals for the two of us for less than the price of one dinner out. I wanted to feel proud, but my melancholy would not allow it.
Roger said, when I asked about the soup, that it was “good,” and he smiled as he lifted the stock pot and tipped it for me to get the last bits of veggies and beef into the freezer containers. I joined him in the living room where he resumed watching You Tube—something to do with car engines, so I checked my phone. One friend complaining that her son … something I shouldn’t repeat here, although she published it on Facebook.
Text messages. One friend was back in the ER, interrupting what had been a fairly uneventful recovery after major surgery. Another friend warned of slick roads. A friend who had missed a fun outing the night before informed us that her headache was somewhat better. And there was more added to our prayer chain. I scrolled backward to make sure I hadn’t missed any prayer requests, and noted that it had been a few days since I’d heard anything about a premature baby that had yet to spend a Christmas at home with her family. We’ve been praying for many weeks … and had some of those prayers answered miraculously. Of course we weren’t the only ones praying, but we were blessed to have been invited into those prayers.
The day was almost gone and had lived up to my low expectations.
But then … another text. Something that happens every year, but not usually to one of your friends or family members. It was one of those stories that happens in winter where a furnace clogs or breaks somehow, and gas fumes accumulate, putting lives at stake without the occupants of a home being aware. People die.
Not this time. “Praise be to God!” my friend reported. She and her grandson had arrived at her daughter’s house and smelled the noxious fumes even before they entered the home. Lives were saved, according to the utility worker who responded to the call. “They wouldn’t have lived through the night with this level of carbon monoxide.”
There was more to her story, but it’s hers to tell. Anyway, I cried before I finished reading her text. I read it again. Gotta make sure I’ve got this right.
“Roger,” I said. I continued even when he didn’t turn to face me. “(My friend’s name) arrived to smell gas at her daughter’s house. She smelled is as soon as she opened her car door. It was really strong, super strong when they opened the door. They got the furnace turned off right away and let fresh air in the house.” I read the rest of the text aloud.
Roger and I talked a bit. I got a husbandly lesson and reminder of what to do in such a situation while my face was wet with tears. I really don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression of my husband. He’s the best. I suppose other husband’s would have responded similarly. Plus, the living room was lit only by the television and the Christmas tree, and I was trying to hide my tears with a normal voice.
“Who did you say?”
He hadn’t started listening to me until a sentence or two in, and I needed to repeat. I do the same to him, so there’s no complaint here.
And, just like that, my melancholy was gone. Tears flowed heavier, but my heart was lighter. Filled. With gratitude and praise. Thank you, Jesus, for being there, for hearing and knowing our needs before we pray and for coming when we call your name. You are so good.
“We can try to find a movie,” Roger said.
I reached for a tissue from the box on the small table between us. “That’s okay. Finish your video. I need to review my lesson for Sunday.”
Experience tells me that it’s seldom just one thing that brings on my Christmas melancholy. Too little sleep. Too much busyness, even the best kind of busyness. When every other area of my life is going well, there is still something/someone missing. Perhaps it’s when I learn how someone else is “doing” Christmas and begin to compare notes. It can also be a song, a hug from a friend or witnessing a kindness or generosity that would not happen except for the season. My daughter has made herself and her children unavailable for things like that from me and most of our family, making it easy for my melancholy mood to slip in and steal a chunk of joy.
And that man I judged suspicious was probably hiding his face from the cold wind.
This will be the tenth Christmas of my family not being together. And I’m not talking location. One of my kids lives overseas and another lives out east. Togetherness does not require being under the same roof. It’s good that sadness doesn’t need to be our loudest emotion. I’ve experienced some best-ever Christmas’ since my daughter stormed out of our home. She thinks she stormed out of our lives, but that won’t happen. Ever.
Last night was nothing magical, but my melancholy ended in less than a couple of hours, without needing Roger’s shoulder. The smell of fresh-baked Christmas cookies and my tummy comforted with hot beef and veggie soup didn’t do it. That text from my friend is what started the turn in my mood. It was her story on my mind as I opened my Bible.
“And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.” (Luke 2:6, KJV).
“And so it was …” I anticipated the rest of that verse, Recited it, and oh how that lifted my attitude. God’s powerful and eternal story spoke to me again. I kept reading. Every time I’ve heard that chapter read or read it myself, there is a certain tone of voice that calms me and comforts me. Again, it’s not magical or mystical. Luke did the storytelling, but the word of God speaks. I don’t care that it’s Charlie Brown who does the reciting, that story speaks to me whatever my current circumstance.
- This is a moment in time, a bump in the road. Settle down.
- Stay with me, right here for a while. Don’t be in such a hurry. I’m taking you to a finer place. I’m doing things that you can’t see and won’t realize for a while.
- I’ll accomplish every good thing I’ve started in you. And by the way, you cannot fathom the good I’ve already done, or how great my finish will be.
- I promised that you’d be delivered. Wait. Anticipate and see.
Now, Jesus didn’t say those words to me, aloud or otherwise, but our encounter left me knowing they were true. Nothing magical. Far better than magic … I encountered the Living God. Jesus is but one of His names.
I woke to my alarm this morning, two hours earlier than usual. I had cookies to deliver. Coat and gloves, not cold enough to need a scarf, but the sun hid behind some pretty thick clouds. Dreary is how I describe days like today.
I went to the church with my cookies and was back in less than twenty minutes. My car barely had time to get warm. Roger was still asleep and those dirty bowls and utensils were still in the sink. My phone says its 45°and Sunny in Pekin, IL, and sunny is spelled with a capital S. We must be living on the wrong side of town because it’s been cloudy the entire time it’s taken me to write this. But we have homemade soup ready to be microwaved when it’s time for lunch, and I had tucked a few cookies away last night for safe from Roger keeping.
My melancholy gone, it wanted to return. My phone had something to do with that, but I sat in my recliner and picked up my Bible for what I’ve come to know as a prompt care visit. No appointment necessary.
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6, KJV).
There’s nothing magical about Christmas. But the lights and sights and sounds of Christmas eventually point me to Jesus, my Wonderful counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father and The Prince of Peace. He is all those things to me, and more.
