It's the most bittersweet time of the year...

Well, we have officially welcomed Christmas! Our tree is up, and the carols are playing. And there is joy. Still, every year when I usher in the season by playing my favoritest Christmas CD's, I can't help but be just a little bit sad. I love the ideal that Christmas is a time to be "home for the holidays" and that it's the "most wonderful time of the year" and that we will always get to have the "perfect ending to a perfect day," but real life doesn't look like that for so many families. I remember in the first few years after Lindsay's death when I would listen to Amy Grant sing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" there were days I found myself crying so hard i couldn't breathe. I would think, It used to be the most wonderful time of the year, but now, trying to carry out old traditions without her feels like stabbing myself in the heart. We didn't dare begin new traditions and leave her behind, but how could we really take joy in gathering around a 6 person table of traditions with only 5 people and a big empty space? But I also cried because I felt guilty that I couldn't shake off my own pain and selfishness and embrace the true meaning of Christmas.
As life has moved forward for me and I have gotten married and had children of my own, it has gotten easier to feel "complete" at Christmastime, but I still have a melancholy feeling the first time I start to hear Christmas music. Tonight I felt an aching to go back in time--back when Lindsay and I sang Christmas songs together, back when I was too young to see how complicated and demanding real life is. Yet at the same time, as I danced with jake to the light of the Christmas tree, I felt joy in HIS innocence, and joy in his chance to feel the magic of Christmas as a child. I thought of how God and time and love and experience have healed the raw, open, wound I felt for so many Christmases in a row without Linds. And that reminded me to rejoice that Christ was born, that he suffered for our sins AND sorrows, and that the atonement has the power to lift us, over time, from darkness to light. That is not just a nice bedtime story--it's REAL.
But then I thought of a woman I know whose husband's funeral is tomorrow, and she is left to get her 5 children through what everyone else will be calling "the most wonderful time of the year." I can imagine the pain, the hole in their hearts, the uncontrollable tears that will come at the times they used to be happy together as a family. I ache for them. And for everyone whose circumstances are not a "picture print by Courier and Ives."
But in all of that, and whatever it is for any of us that leaves us with a gaping hole at Christmas time, I always end up coming back to the reality that JOY is not the absence of suffering--JOY is the presence of God. And that is why we sing "Joy to the World!" That is why we can sing it evey year, whether through laughter or through tears--we can sing "Joy to the World!" because the Lord has come. He will never leave us comfortless. We may not always be able to gather all of our loved ones close on Christmas Eve, but if we focus on the real reason to celebrate--the coming of the Savior into the world--we can be filled with a love that transcends geography, transcends time, transcends all of our mortal limitations.
I feel closest to her when I'm closest to Him.

"Silent Night, Holy Night, Son of God, Love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy holy face, With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jesus, Lord at thy birth."