Contrasts

I've heard that Christmas is a hard time for many people. One study found that 38% of those surveyed said their stress increases in December. Others find the longer hours of darkness to negatively affect their emotional health. 

There are many reasons for depression, but I used to assume that those hardest hit are the ones with no family and friends, like the man we caroled to this week who sat in a dark trailer and said no one visits him. My heart breaks for him, and the many others, who sit alone night after night.

I wonder if it is the contrast that is most painful. The contrast of what you had and now don't. The contrast between what you want and what you've been given. The contrast between reality and desire. The more jolly and merry in the world around us - even if it is fake, the more stark our own life can appear.

Our December has been rich, and full, and beautiful. I love the gatherings, the food, the people. We've attended numerous music events: church caroling, Christmas singings, concerts, and community events. Each one fills me with deep joy. 

But the joy contrasts to loss. Just as a splotch of mud stands out starkly on a bride's white dress, so grief at Christmas feel highlighted with neon lights. 

Twenty years ago Ed proposed on Christmas Eve. Though he is gone, the hole he leaves is too big to be forgotten by filling the social calendar and singing "Joy to the World." Memories run too deep. I'm surrounded with tangible reminders. I pull a book off the shelf and find his name inscribed. I rummage for a piece of scrap paper and find a list of points in Ed's handwriting for a game he was playing with the children three years ago. The children flip through photos and videos on my phone (which was once Ed's), and I hear his voice singing Christmas carols. 

I don't want to lose memories. But the beauty of memories carry a gut punch. 

I recently reread A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser. He compares catastrophic loss to an amputation. 

"We can recover from broken limbs, not amputation. Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the past, which is gone forever, only going ahead to the future, which has yet to be discovered. Whatever that future is, it will, and must, include the pain of the past with it. Sorrow never entirely leaves the soul of those who have suffered a severe loss. If anything, it may keep going deeper." (Please go read the whole book because I can't copy down everything I underlined.)

Somehow that has been comforting. Maybe it is a sign of health that the deeper the joy, the greater the contrast to the deep sorrow. Sweet contrasts with bitter. Light to darkness. The heartbreak of the cross to the glory of the resurrection. The valley of the shadow of death to the gates of heaven.

I don't know how to hold both joy and sorrow in my heart at the same time, but I'm not given an option. I know many of you are walking through similar contrasts. May we not deny the pain or decline the joy, but embrace both. It sounds cliché, but this is why Jesus came. To walk into our sorrow and give us eternal hope.

"And ye, beneath life's crushing load, 

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now! for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing:

O rest beside the weary road, 

And hear the angels sing." 

(3rd verse of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear)

I'm including a video of a song by Aspire Chamber Choir that I loved this month. (If reading by email you may need to click over to the website for the video.) You can also enjoy Aspire's entire Christmas concert.