I hear all the time when I see people I haven’t in awhile, “We have been worried about you.” I appreciate the care they are conveying. We have been functioning but with Thanksgiving, Christmas and Boeys 1 yr anniversary coming up our hearts and our pain have been stirring.
In our town the Pepsi bottling plant puts up a large Christmas display. This year when I saw it being put up it was different from other years; this year my heart sank. I remembered years past when we would drive through it on Thanksgiving night and every time we passed it on the way home. The kids loved to do it together. Last year my son Chris was asked to do a couple new characters based on the pictures he did on the Extreme Makeover show! They are wonderful memories; but now some of the best memories are the hardest ones to recall.
It reminds me of the Christmas story itself. Everyone loves to picture the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger.(Funny how we have even romanticized the scene to be a good thing; have you actually smelled a manger? Not exactly the place I would want a newborn baby to be .) The picture of the Nativity with the singing angels, wise men and the proud couple with the birth of the Savior is powerful and beautiful. But on the other side of that coin is the rest of the story.
Herod sent the wise men on a trip to find this child because of the sign in the sky and the prophetic words about this shepherd-king that was born. He intended to kill this rival before he was able to grow up. When the wise men were warned in a dream to not go back to tell Herod it says in Mathew 2 :16 “Herod, when he realized that the scholars had tricked him, flew into a rage. He commanded the murder of every little boy two years old and under who lived in Bethlehem and its surrounding hills. That’s when Jeremiah’s sermon was fulfilled:
“A sound was heard in Ramah,
Weeping and much lament.
Rachel weeping for her children,
Rachel refusing all solace,
Her children gone,
Dead and buried”
So in the midst of the tidings of great joy there were many thousands of families that had horrible horrible grief. Can you even imagine? A soldier of the king coming to your house, drawing his sword and killing your baby right before you? Unannounced, unplanned, uncomprehensible grief at the outrage! The unfairness! I can relate.
I wish the story of Christmas ended at the end of chapter 1 of Mathew with the beautiful birth of Jesus but it does not. Some people would come and worship and bring gifts to the baby Jesus because they understand the prophetic and what his appearance means. Others, like Herod, would just like Jesus, and his claim of leadership to just go away. They don’t want to be threatened with anyone to have control over them. They don’t understand the love and hope he offers, only that he wants influence and they don’t like it. In real life it was so dramatic that it played out that he tried to kill him and actually killed the hopes and dreams of many mothers in Bethlehem and surrounding areas!
Jesus himself said “blessed is he who is not offended on account of me.” He knew that things would not always be as expected. He knew the plan of his father. He knew that God often offends the mind to get to the heart. He knew that in this world we would have suffering sometimes great suffering. He also knew that man simplifies faith and God into formulas and boxes. If you believe in God you will always be blessed right? Nope. That’s not always the way it goes. It offends the mind, doesn’t make sense.
So here my family is at Christmas time. We are in a very strange place. We have sadness and hope. It doesn’t all make sense. Our sadness is obvious and understandable. Our hope is a very strange phenomenon to us. We are very very full of hope and even an expectancy of joy. It does not cancel out the pain or the grief but it is just as real. As I describe it now I am finding it difficult to explain. I could explain it as a looking forward to heaven and being with Boey again but it is a more resident hope. A spiritual and deep nourishment that resides deep in our hearts. It is exciting and good.
I am probably having a hard time explaining what is going on because it is spiritual rather than mental or emotional. Just understand that we are becoming more aware of God’s presence than ever. We are getting hope and joy; the paradox is that we are missing Boey more than ever during this Holiday season than ever before. I would really like to do a better job of describing this especially for the book that I am writing but I touched on it. So there it is Grief and hope, Pain and excitement. I guess that is Christmas for us this year, as it was in the beginning.
Thank you everyone for the love and support. Love your families and appreciate them this holiday season. I am going to go spray some holiday scent in the air: I believe it is “manger scent” for the holidays.
