Around this time, on the brink of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I begin to feel the overwhelming culmination of hopes and fears amidst holiday preparation. It’s not that I don’t like the holidays, but as I grow older, they have tended to lose their childlike wonder and instead, become a mad rush to the finish line of whatever calendar year we are in. I’m sure you feel it too. Even more so, I think this feeling is heightened because perhaps this year more than other years, we feel like we must supplement or make up for lost years in COVID (Winter 2020 and 2021) when the typical dazzling parties, holiday bling, elegant activities, and sparkly wish lists were all unveiled in a dreamy tapestry.
But, here we are, a week from Thanksgiving, and all I feel is like I need some space. I’m burned out. Inundated with needs, requests and impending deadlines at work. My house needs a deep clean. I’m sick with a cold. My closet is a wreck. And I’ve barely picked the creative side of my brain to figure out when I’m going to decorate my house, what Christmas cookies I’m going to make, and how I want to show up for others in this season of giving. I told my therapist yesterday, I just want to retreat. As quoted in Dumb and Dumber, ‘all I want is some peace and quiet!!!’ (I’ll be quiet AND peace, thank you!) On top of it, I’ve gotten 15 Black Friday promotion e-mails and we are still 10 days out from Black Friday. Bottom line? #Supplychain
It’s deeper than Amazon Prime though. As an unmarried, single woman, Christmas represents family time. It means dozens of beautiful family holiday cards that come in the mail. (No, I’m not sending a photo out of just myself!) It means sleeping in my childhood twin bed upstairs in my parents’ home for a week and being reminded that I am still not there with my own family. It means foregoing social media at times, because let’s face it, comparing yourself to other couples matching Christmas pajama photos can be a bit sad. It means wiping away tears when I bake my Grandmother’s Norwegian cookies because I miss her, though it’s been a year and a half since she passed away in COVID. It means facing the reality that my parents are growing older and I can’t imagine the holidays without them someday. It means wondering if I will ever see the delight of my own child’s face when he or she opens up a gift from Santa Claus.
Wherever you find yourself, however you are currently feeling about the holidays, know this. You are not alone, because Emmanuel, “God with us,” is coming. And when all is stripped away, the promised one, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, has promised us that the ‘better portion’ is simply being with him, not doing more. And in his own poverty, the Son of God, born in a humble manger, has been born into the world to ensure that our own spiritual poverty – our feelings of lack, emptiness, longing and yearning – are richly filled in His glorious presence.
You can’t change all of your circumstances, but you can do three things this holiday season which I believe truly brings us nearer to true contentment, peace, and joy.
- Protect your Peace. It isn’t easy to put guard-rails up on your own peace. To protect the boundary lines of your own joy and sanity. Guard it with your life. Say no! Do you have clarity of your own boundaries this Christmas season? How can you pause and assess where you are out of balance and how you might be able to decrease your commitments, full calendar, and self-imposed expectations so that your peace may increase. It isn’t easy defining our own boundaries around the holidays – financial, relational, mental, physical and spiritual. But in order to guard our own margin, centeredness and margin, we must determine what is stealing our peace, and then pro-actively work to re-order whatever we need to, to safe guard our peace and rest.
- Prepare Him Room. Around the holidays, I find myself sub-consciously trying to spark joy by preparing room in my little home – not just for the Christmas tree or to purge, but metaphorically, to prepare God room in my heart and soul. Maybe you’re religious, maybe you’re not. But, there is a fundamental practice that I find helpful around the holidays, which is to create spiritual soul-space. Maybe it is cathartically getting rid of things that you no longer want to hold space for in your life – this could be physical things, but it could also be toxic relationships, activities you are robotically involved in that really don’t fulfill your sense of belonging and purpose, or even omitting social media and binge-watching from your evening ritual so that your sleep hygiene and mental space increases before you sleep at night. From a Christian perspective, I find the thought of preparing Christ room in my soul opens up space for me to freshly ponder God’s light and presence in my life, how He is moving and shifting my desires and dreams and needs in this season, and how I can simply wonder at who He is and what the Christmas season truly means – God has come to dwell with man.
- Ponder His glory and goodness. When Mary realizes she is pregnant with the Messiah, it says in the book of Luke that her soul ‘magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…for he who is mighty has done great things for me.’ Elizabeth her cousin says, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” (Luke 1: 45)
Now, you may not find yourself with child this holiday season, but the reality is, we are all pregnant with hopes and dreams. Equally, those hopes and dreams are in tension with fears and doubts and disappointments. How do we keep dreaming and continue to magnify God’s ability to do the impossible in our lives? How do we keep believing? Not in Santa Claus, or an American holiday that sparks consumption, not even in a mystical promise that all will feel sparkly and perfect around a season that often surfaces deep pain, loneliness, and mental health issues for many. We keep dreaming by pondering God’s goodness in our lives. We keep dreaming by pondering His glory and ability to break-through, even in the places where we feel like we’ve run up against a brick wall. Remembrance unlocks gratitude. Remembrance unlocks childlike faith. Remembrance of God’s best moments in you and your best moments with God secures hope. Not false hope that assumes God is a juke-box or slot-machine or sitting in the North Pole ready to give us whatever we ask for – but deep, abiding pure hope rooted in the reality that: “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”
My prayer for you this holiday season is that you will keep dreaming even when you’d rather hold your breath, close your eyes, snap your fingers, and skip the holidays to January 2022. God fills the hungry with good things. There is good to be had this holiday season, and as we protect our peace and prepare Him room, something magical happens – we open up the space of our souls and empty our own expectations and longings so that He might come into the home of our hearts and fill us afresh with His wonderful glory and goodness.