The snow is falling softly outside my window. I can see it landing on my car, my porch, the rooftops. Most days I pretend the rooftops are mountains and that I live in Colorado instead of Binbrook. Days like this — where the snow is fully covering the houses, and all I can see are white peaks — I can almost convince myself it’s true.
Yesterday, I cooked a full turkey dinner. Math has never been my forte, and I made 20 pounds of mashed potatoes when we only needed about seven. We had full, huge pots of potatoes leftover and will be eating them for weeks. We gathered a few friends and ate until our stomachs hurt. My nephew decorated the gingerbread I made, and together we seasoned the turkey.
In these moments — when I am alone in my apartment while the snow is falling, or when I am in a house humming with conversation and the smell of Christmas dinner — these are the moments I always think I might fully experience the presence of God. He is with me in both kinds of moments, that is to be sure. But this Advent, I have seen Him in so much more.
This December has been a strange month, filled with grief and sadness and suffering. The first week of December hit with hard news for close friends — and all I can think of each day are the people I love who are in the trenches of suffering. It has been the lens in which I’ve viewed the world this Christmas: who might be suffering, at this very moment, on this very day?
I am normally Christmas-obsessed, watching dozens of Christmas movies, going to Christmas markets, driving to chase the Christmas lights as far as I can. This year, I have hardly done anything. And yet I can feel the coming of the King as much as I can feel my lungs ready for their next breath.
Earlier this month, I realized I had been sleepwalking. I was so afraid of the pain around me — the raw suffering in the eyes of people I love. I didn’t know how to hold all of this together in my hands. How do you hold the joy of Christmas and the pain of true suffering? How can I honour celebration and grief? So I fell asleep. I became apathetic. I got through my days without noticing anything or anyone. I did not know how to fix the world around me, so I fell asleep to it.
But God, in His infinite kindness, woke me up. He reminded me I’m not the Saviour. He reminded me of what I can do: wake up and notice people. Look into their eyes. Tell them they mean something. Give from the love I have been given. Count the gifts I have and mark the ways God is constantly showing up in my life.
This December, I have slowed down long enough to notice people.
I have put my phone on silent more often.
I wake up and record the ways I’m thankful, first thing in the morning.
I have gone on walks without my phone, without music, with just the Spirit of God around me, and the crunch of gravel and frozen grass beneath my feet.
I have had opportunities to show kindness to my literal neighbours, to slow down long enough to learn their names and have a conversation.
I have thought less about the gifts I am buying and more about the people in the sphere of my life.
All of this because I’ve been looking through the mixed lens of suffering and celebration. It is a hard thing to hold together in your hands — but the more I learn about Jesus, the more I realize He does most things in a way my brain finds difficult to fathom. He holds the impossible together. He weaves suffering and celebration and He is present in all of it.
This is always what I keep coming back to — even when I have a thousand questions like why chemotherapy has to exist, or why people die before their wedding day — that God is present in all of this. That Emmanuel is not only with us on snowy mornings in our apartments or dinners with friends to celebrate Christmas.
But God is here, in the midst of it all. God came to the world and put skin on. Jesus knows suffering and He knows celebration. And Jesus is here — in chemo suites and Christmas dinners.
So instead of trying to hold this all together in my hands, I can look to the One who is holding me. I still have a thousand questions. I still don’t understand.
But I take a deep breath and invite Jesus, once again, to take space in my life. I ask Him to show me who He is through chilly walks and silence in the morning and dinners with friends and encounters with neighbours and the suffering in my friend’s eyes.
I will view Christmas as a way to love people over and over and over again — because there is an ever-present God who loves me.