One year ago, on Christmas Eve, I was asked to open up the Christmas Eve service at my church. I surprised myself by saying yes without thinking about it, and even more so by following through and speaking in front of a large crowd of my church family.
It has been an exceptionally long week, it feels like, and I am past the brink of exhaustion, but now that my children are sound asleep and I am sitting in quiet stillness beside the lights of our Christmas tree with remnants of gift opening still scattered a few places throughout the living room, I feel compelled to try to express the thoughts of my tired mind through my fingertips before I can drift off to sleep. My spirit feels awakened and like there is so much to say, I just hope that it flows out in somewhat coherent formation.
Christmas is such a profound time of year. In the Christian faith, the meaning of Christmas centers around the arrival of God here on earth, as a tiny human baby, ready to live a life for us, to die for us, so we can live forever. It’s about true love. It’s about blessing. It’s about giving. It’s about family. It’s about all of these monumental, incredible, overwhelmingly good things.
It’s also about sacrifice. It’s about saying yes to the most encompassing love you can feel, birthing a true miracle, knowing that it is a gift for you, but knowing it is to be given as a gift for all of mankind, for all of your life, and for all of eternity.
I can hardly fathom that, even knowing what it is about.
I can remember the first time that all really penetrated my heart, though.
It was a decade ago.
It was a barely lit room.
It was the middle of a quiet night.
It was with a tiny, almost 8 week-old baby boy on my bosom, and a dog at my feet.
It was a gut wrenching, tear producing moment in the middle of a cold winter’s night.
It was the moment that I feel I saw what Mary saw, the night she held Jesus in her arms in that stable, half a world away from where I was, centuries before I ever walked the earth.
I had my miracle son in my arms.
I felt so selfishly grateful that I knew I was not in Mary’s shoes, having to sacrifice my son for the world. I wept as I imagined what her life was like. I tried to fathom what it would be like, to grow my son inside my body, and years later, have to watch my son’s body be beaten and broken, the life tortured away in front of the masses, the weight of the world’s sins upon his back as he bled and died for all of those who loved him, those who did not know to love him, those all around the world. At the same time, I realized that it was possible that, loving and living a life for Jesus could mean that some day, however unlikely it seems, my son may end up sacrificing himself for the love of others in this world. I prayed it would never happen, and I could keep him for ever and always until the end of my time. I felt relieved to know that it was never God’s plan for me to fill Mary’s shoes.
However, I admired Mary. She had the most amazing strength, and I bet she did not realize how strong she was.
Yet, also, I pitied Mary. She watched the most brutal and prolonged murder of her blessed baby boy and knew she had to allow it to happen.
I thought about how she spent her son’s entire loving him, nurturing him, and devoting herself to him, in a way no mother had to prior nor ever will again. She knew from the moment she conceived him that he was sent for the world but her momma’s heart would have had no idea what that entailed. She knew she was going to be sacrificing her body, her heart, and her soul for her son, for all of humanity, and despite knowing the details, she said yes. She had the most incredible, willing faith.
I know that Christmas is not about Mary. But I also know that thinking about Mary that Christmas changed me.
Holding my own son in my arms that night brought such a deeper meaning to the gift of true love, blessed upon the world, born to save us all. I saw the true meaning of Christmas in my own baby’s eyes.
I believe that processing and understanding the depth of this realization will be a lifelong process for me. Every year, I believe I understand a little bit more. It is a gift given to me by my journey through motherhood. I have heard commentary about how magical and joyful it is to experience Christmas as a child, but how much more magical and joy-filled it is to experience children living out the wonder of Christmas. I think there’s truth to that, but I definitely contend that the meaning of Christmas is what changed most for me having my children to experience Christmases alongside.
Knowing that Christmas is about the true love born as a baby, given for the restoration of our eternity and relationship with our Heavenly Father is something I try to instill upon my children. I know it gets lost often in the merriment of giving and receiving of gifts, the chaos and clatter of paper and packages, the fawning and fighting that may go along with an abundance of material blessings all in one grand swoop, but I try. Knowing what I know, recalling that night a decade ago helps guide me through exciting, yet sometimes stressful holiday moments, and helps me take some quiet moments to center my heart back where it belongs, not in current circumstances where children maybe had a little too much Christmas excitement for the day and are emotionally exhausted and physically fried, but in my gratefulness for the gift only our Heavenly Father could give, and the thankfulness for that young mother, eons ago, who said yes to a calling and gifted her most treasured blessing, her miracle, for me.
I pray that someday, my children are able to more fully embrace a deeper, truer meaning of Christmas. I know that they know it’s about Jesus being born for us so that he could die and bring us to God. But, perhaps, one day as an adult, they too will be able to feel the depth and profound meaning of Christmas in a child’s eyes, if they do not have that opportunity while gazing into their mother’s as children themselves.
I have had my share of monumental type Christmases in a wide variety of ways, each of which had a lasting impact on my memories and emotions, shaping my life story and sculpting me into who I am.
That Christmas ten years ago changed me in ways I am still discovering.
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