Listening to Christmas carols in October...

Okay, little confession...I used to detest Christmas carols before the day after Thanksgiving. In fact, as I've learned to embrace Advent, they even started to annoy me up until it is actually the day - Christmas! And if you're anything like me, the whole holiday scene just leaves something to be desired anyway. I always far prefer the quiet silent nights after the big day, when most people have moved on and all the stress is behind me.

This is just a tough time of the year for some people. It is a time of intense loss in my own life, starting with November 21st, the day we lost our fourth child to miscarriage nine years ago. Somehow it always sneaks up on me, unbidden, and usually just beyond my conscious awareness, until one day I silently begin to wonder what is wrong with me. I don't even know why this is so present in my mind this year. Someone brought it up recently, and while I was happy to help with the knowledge I've gained, it also reopened a lot of stuff I'd rather just forget and move on from, but I'm not so sure that's God's plan for me right now, much as they desired to spare me the discomfort. 

I don't think it's really about the pain of the thing itself, but in wondering whether someone will walk with us through it, to be there to simply receive it, and to sit with us through it, without trying to explain, blame or push it away, with platitudes, etc. To offer the pure gift of presence.

For some reason, this year, I want everything Christmas, starting back around October. My kids started noticing, one by one, the strange sound of Christmas carols in the car each day. Naturally, they pretty much made fun of me (I love them anyway, I'm okay to be a rebel in this today). Then, they wanted to take a few of the coloring pages from the new Christmas coloring book I bought for myself at the supermarket. Now, we're all making lists and I'm already thinking of cookies, bad made-for-tv movies, hot chocolate, and the like.

I remember the first Christmas after the shutdowns, everyone wanted to put up Christmas lights early and they kept them up until, I don't know, forever. As stories came out over time, the lights just brought joy into an otherwise bleak time. We all needed a little hope, and this was a great way to find it. 

Tonight, as I was noodling around through an old Bible study, a word caught my eye. 

Emmanuel, God with us. 

I think this is what we are really looking for in all these things, all these lights, the early Christmas carols, the coloring book I carry everywhere lately, like Linus' blanket. We want to know He's still there. 

These things seem kinda silly at the moment, but truly they are not. I think, in the middle of messy things we can't explain, things like reopened pain, rather than to just try to get by, God is asking us to simply pause in the middle of it all and just let Him be. With us.