A local radio station has been playing around-the-clock Christmas music for a couple of weeks. The commercials have begun, and holiday catalogs have been consistently showing up in my mail. The stores are all decked out in trees and twinkling lights. The youngest child asked just the other day, “When are we going to decorate for Christmas?”
Thanksgiving. Christmas. Family gatherings. All the festivities. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Right?
Except that’s not true for many people. Including me.
This impending season of great joy is mixed with an equal amount of sorrow. I keep trying to figure out how to capture and keep the joy, how to banish the sorrow. I lie in bed counting my blessings just before I drift off to sleep. I awake in the mornings trying to muster up the faith to believe joy can be found even in the midst of sorrow.
Scripture defines faith as the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). On the flip side of the coin, faith seems a little like denying reality. So if faith and joy go hand in hand, it’s quite possible my hands are empty.
My friend recently suggested that I’m longing for what never was and what never will be. Isn’t that what faith is — the hope that all things will be made new? That relationships can be reconciled and restored? That joy comes in the morning . . . after the mourning? That sorrow serves a purpose? That the muck and mire of reality can be transformed into something beautiful?
So I’m grasping with slippery fingers at my fragile, failing faith. I want to believe that all the years of joyous occasions that have been met with sorrow can feel like a blessing instead of a curse. I need a holiday miracle.
My guess is that there are many like me — who want to experience joy that drowns out sorrow this upcoming season, who are fanning the embers of faith one more time. My prayer for us is that even the slightest hints of faith will be rewarded with the gifts of love, joy and peace in abundance this year.
Will be praying that you do experience joy now and always.
I can relate to that. The Holidays are some of the hardest and worst times for me. I blogged about it a lot last year, and by a lot I mean, more than once. This is when the disfunction between my sisters, parents and I is most obvious, this is when the balance between my faith and my husband’s atheism becomes more painfully obvious. This time of year is when my depression tends to flare up. Too many decisions to make, too much pressure, too much deviation from our routine… I do believe that joy comes after sorrow. That God can put our broken pieces back into something more beautiful than before. I realize that in the dark this feels like a shout into the void, but I heard once that it is in the seasons of darkness that God is most near, we just can’t see it till He has passed. Like Moses in the cleft of the rock.