Bringing Heartache to the Manger [By Jen]
I have always been a crier. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I cry easily, sometimes embarrassingly so. This time of year, my tendency to tear up comes out in full force. If you’ve followed us on our journey, you have probably heard me talk about the traumatic stillbirth of our first son in December 2012.
As we got ready to kick off the Christmas season that year, we were expecting our first child. I had been horribly sick, but had made it about halfway through the pregnancy. I traveled to a nutrition class by myself five hours away from home, and wound up going into labor in my hotel room in the early morning. Before I even realized what was happening to me I was holding a lifeless baby in my arms--a perfectly formed, tiny baby boy. What followed was an absolute enveloping of comfort, friendship, and support. A sister in Christ whom I didn't even know sat with me, sang over me, and read scripture to me while we waited for Craig to arrive. Friends who were still new to me at home cleaned our house, left dinner in the oven, and a fire in the woodstove. Our church lifted us up; they remembered our sadness and longing for a baby in their prayers for years until their prayers were finally answered. It was all so humbling, so heartbreaking, and so surreal.
Nine years have passed, and my heart is still heavy when I think about that day. My heart is heavy, and I know that I am joined by so many others who feel sadness this time of year. Christmas time brings nostalgia and marks the passage of time. It magnifies loss and drives many of us to our knees in remembrance and acknowledgement of the things that didn’t go the way we wished they had--of the heartache in our lives, of the ones who are missing at the table, of the hope deferred of another year of waiting instead of fruition. And for me, the sadness of this season is redeemed only and completely through the beauty of the Christmas story. I am certain that the Christmas story welcomes our sadness in a deep and powerful way.
I used to think that Jesus being laid in a manger was sweet and romantic; it had rustic charm, and it seemed that hay was a soft bed for a baby. My childhood perceptions were changed, however, when I started to actually be around animals who eat hay out of a manger. Hay is unbelievably scratchy, and where you have animals you have manure. I am perplexed by the King of Kings being laid in a manger in a dirty barn because he had nowhere to stay; it should not have been that way. It should not have been that the community rejected Mary and Joseph for saying yes to carry a mysterious, Holy Spirit baby. It should not have been that all the boys under two were lost to a tyrannical government seeking to eliminate the tiny Prince of Peace. And yet, those details are part of what makes the story so strangely beautiful. The heartbreaking humility of Christmas crashes into the heartbreaking humility of the human experience and creates something totally new--a belief that even when things go terribly wrong, God’s story is redeeming and restoring every last detail.
The sweet aroma of this truth is evident at the ranch this time of year, as staff and students enjoy many festivities of the season together. Our quiet sadness about our baby carves out a place for grief in the midst of celebration, and becomes permeated with hope, illuminated by laughter, and held together in faith. We enter into the reality of Christmas with vulnerability and the peace of being seen just as we are--broken, messy masterpieces awaiting our Savior. The humble sadness of the Christmas story allows us to bring our heartache to the manger and place our hope in a baby who will make all things new. And though we are sad, we are given the opportunity to experience joy and wonder like the shepherds--amazed that God would reveal His glory to us, that He would send his only son to be the ransom for our sins, that He would redeem and restore us and then use our stories to redeem and restore others.
God welcomes our sadness at Christmas time, and invites us into the true joy of knowing that our sadness is not the end of the story. He calls us in faith to be joyful and celebrate, not pretending that we aren’t sad, rather embracing the fact that our sadness is the very reason this humble Savior came. He invites us to lay down our notion of being “harassed and helpless...sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36) and to take up our new identity as a “chosen...special possession of God” (1 Peter 2:9), able to celebrate with supernatural peace even when it doesn’t make any worldly sense. I pray that we will lean on one another to share our grief this Christmas, and that we may rest in reminding one another that even when it feels impossible to celebrate, “The Lord [our] God is in [our] midst; he will rejoice over [us] with gladness; he will quiet [us] by his love; he will exalt over [us] with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).