This Season Is Different...

I looked at the front of my house today, devoid of the Christmas lights that have adorned every home I've occupied for the past 13 years. And I thought "it's different this year".

How different this season looks as widow. How different this season seems to a sibling who has lost a brother. How different this season feels for the ones who no longer have their uncle. How different this season appears to parents whose son is gone.

I look at this Christmas season and I can see all the differences. All the lost moments. All the broken traditions. All the memories. All the grief.

This year is different. So incredibly different. And we have had to face those differences at every turn this season. With every box of decorations that we unpacked. With every tradition that we've faced. With every string of lights that went unhung. With every problem that went unsolved. 

We are all different this year. We are all changed. We all feel strange about this new season we are facing. 

But different does not have to mean dismantled, changed does not have to mean crushed, strange does not have to mean shattered, 

We are given the power to write our own stories. The Holy Spirit gives us all we need to look at these moments and whisper "it's different...but it's still beautiful. It's changed...but it's somehow stronger. It's strange...but it's also hopeful".

There is beauty in facing broken traditions and rewriting them again. In getting Christmas trees and decorating the house. In laughing over eggnog and The Grinch. In sharing Christmas lists and buying gifts for someone special. 

There is strength in taking steps forward into the unknown of a Christmas spent alone. In facing what being single means. In attending events alone. In choosing to love where you are now.

There is hope in a future where love may exist in this place once more. In reaching out and starting new friendships. In asking someone out for coffee. In choosing to believe that you are worth it. 

It sucks that we all had to go through this loss, this drastic change. But it happened, and that cannot be undone. We cannot just rail at the world for the unfairness of it all. Has that ever really worked for anyone?

We have to accept all that it is and we have to let go of all that it isn't. 

Beauty comes from the acceptance that our scars do not diminish us, they just make us different than we were before. They are bright examples of what we've survived. They prove that we have faced the unbearable, that it has changed us forever, and that we have embraced the beauty in that brokenness. The scars threatened to dismantle what we thought we knew of God, but His love is so much more powerful than that. 

They are the beacons we can point to and say "Come and see what God has done...it's different...but it's still beautiful".

Strength comes from everything we thought we knew being challenged. It's in asking ourselves what remains as truth, and what we must let go of because they are lies that threaten to crush us. When the worst possible thing happens, we can sit in the darkness and loneliness and whisper the truth of the gospel to our weary hearts. Knowing that what was sown in the light is still strong in the dark and that even in the darkest of moments, we chose to trust.

In this we can reach out and share our stories "I still love God...it's changed...but it's somehow stronger".

Hope exists all around us, we only need to reach out and grasp on to it. The hardest part is when it's something we never thought we would have to hope for. A new life, a new love, a new future, when the old ones were so shattered. We never wanted to have to hope for these things again. It's strange to feel it and more complicated than we could imagine, but it's out there, just waiting for us to embrace it. 

This is how we know our scars are healing "I can feel it shifting my heart...it’s strange...but it’s also hopeful".

I cannot help but think about how Mary and Joseph must have felt that very first Christmas season. 

How different Mary’s future must have looked to her, as an unwed, pregnant teenager. To be told that she was carrying the very Messiah the Jews had been waiting for. What a heaviness that must have come with that joy. What faithfulness Mary showed to her Heavenly Father and to her unborn savior son. Embracing the differences of her life and allowing the beauty of redemption to come forth from her womb. 

How changed Joseph must have felt after the angel, Gabriel, visited him and laid upon him the mantle of protector and father to the savior of the world. He must have wondered how he could possibly be strong enough to protect the baby who’s entire identity was wrapped in intentional sacrifice. Joseph had to embrace the change of his own identity in order to sustain the identity of someone so miraculous and ordained. A little boy child, not of his flesh, but surely of his heart.

How strange this little family must have seemed to the world. Created to be different then any other family. Ordained to live a life of sacrifice. How strange for a king to have been born in a lowly manger, for a man to embrace a child not his own, for an imperfect woman to give birth to perfection.

So, this season, join me in embracing the different, the changed, and the strange. Because the Bible has shown us that the greatest sacrifice and redemption in this world was once perceived as those very things. 

A king, born in a lowly manger, to save the world…how different, how life changing, how very strange.