Rediscovering Love in the Shadows of Christmas

Everyone carries at least a small level of heartbreak around the holidays, but all of us can be rediscovering love in the shadows of Christmas.

Christmas is such a polarising time for so many people. Its public representation features optimal joy, singing, caroling, adventuring, seeing lots of people you always see or those you haven’t caught up with in some time. The ideals of life are thrown our way through all the movies, songs, pictures and presents wherever you go.

And guess what happens to a lot of us? We can get crushed by these perfect idealistic images. In fact some research from the Salvation Army in Australia found the following:

• 83% of households with children are worried that they cannot afford presents for their children
• 56% are worried about not being able to afford a special Christmas Day meal
• 51% are worried and stressed about their mental health
• 36% feel lonely and isolated
• 44% did not feel important to others

Perhaps at the heart of it is really just a few common disappointments that get absolutely blown out by the holiday season. A love unrequited, forgotten, or lost. A family member or friend passed recently or many years ago whose absence still looms large over your heart or the heart of your family. Family dysfunction or disunity that is either exacerbated or embellished at Christmas. A marriage or a love life you’re not that happy with.

The feeling of being alone.

It seems insurmountable to conjure up happiness when there’s a gaping hole in the middle of who you are. When the love is gone. Or maybe you feel it wasn’t there to begin with.

And yet this Christmas season I want to encourage you that for all the love you’ve lost, all the people who’ve left your life, all the things that didn’t go the way you want and all the pain you’ve endured, you can spend this year’s end rediscovering love that is within you, around you, towards you, and for you.

First let’s spend a bit of time addressing the pain of Christmas. If any of the above life situations resonates with you, you’re not alone, and it can (and should) be painful when you lose people you care about. I know there have been many years where Christmas has been difficult or a reminder of a break up or a relationship end. As I wrote in my year in review a little while ago, I’ve seen some relationships end this year as well.

I was reminded again a few nights ago of a story one of my good friends and mentors to a lot of people shared with me this year which is called The Bridge by Jewish rabbi Edwin Friedman in his book Friedman’s Fables. In the story, a man is set on accomplishing much with his life and has a lot of his own personal responsibilities when another man ties a rope around his own waist, hands it to the man, and jumps off a nearby bridge, saying to the man holding the rope that he’s his only hope and it’s his responsibility to make sure he doesn’t fall.

He tries to get the man to pull himself up a little bit because the man is simply too heavy to continue holding for an indefinite period, and is also too heavy to pull back up on to the ledge on his own. His own responsibilities and purpose are hindered and held in deadlock all the while this dangling man keeps heckling him for not being caring, for not helping enough, for not being willing to continue to support a ridiculously unfair situation.

After multiple attempts at trying to get the man who jumped to take personal responsibility for the situation he’s in, to stop blaming the person he’s put in an unfair and untenable situation, and to help himself enough to actually get out of this situation, the following moment occurs in the story:

“I want you to listen carefully,” he said, “because I mean what I am about to say. I will not accept the position of choice for your life, only for my own; the position of choice for your own life I hereby give back to you.”
“What do you mean?” the other asked, afraid.
“I mean, simply, it’s up to you. You decide which way this ends. I will become the counterweight. You do the pulling and bring yourself up. I will even tug a little from here.” He began unwinding the rope from around his waist and braced himself anew against the side.
“You cannot mean what you say,” the other shrieked. “You would not be so selfish. I am your responsibility. What could be so important that you would let someone die? Do not do this to me.”
He waited a moment. There was no change in the tension of the rope.
“I accept your choice,” he said, at last, and freed his hands.

I share all this to say that some of the people in our lives we’ve had to say goodbye to, or we’ve had to leave, or they’ve had to leave, because they can no longer accept the pressure or the situation that exists.

For every person who’s been frequently abused by a spouse or a relative, every parentified child, every employee who can no longer cope with the toxicity or pressure beyond your natural limit, every friend with an addiction who is only looking to be surrounded by passive yes men who empower them to keep spending or cheating or whatever else – sometimes we’ve had to let go of the rope and say “I accept your choice”.

In other words, not everyone you’ve had to say goodbye to or all the love you’ve lost in your life has been necessarily a net negative – perhaps it has been a net positive.

As a Christian leader I regularly have people who have been divorced or separated or ended a long relationship say they’ve prayed over and over to God for someone to love them properly, only to see a relationship end. After seeing this enough times, not in every situtation, but in enough of them my conclusion is that maybe that person could or would never be that person in your life, and perhaps restoration in your life means moving on, being free from a person or people who can’t be the person you hope them to be, and finding freedom and joy elsewhere.

Some homes you can renovate, but others you have to clear the ruins and wreckage and build anew. Both are restoration, and both are wonderful when they occur in your life.

Reconciliation with people should always be our first response and attempt, but if a limit has been reached or breached without repentance, change, mediation proving useful, and no forward steps, you can still live a life of peace in knowing you’ve done all you could. More in How a Warped View of Forgiveness Enables Abuse and Destroys Lives

But we also say goodbye to many people who have been overwhelmingly positive towards us as well. My wife and I recently lost a mentor figure we’ve known for many years only in the last week or so and the shadow of his loss seems enormous at times. He was a trusted confidant, an investor in other people, and someone who was just also good to share a meal or a drink with.

I think we all need to be reminded just how short our term on this earth really can be. I’ve known people to have lost infants before birth or shortly thereafter, children who die way too young, teenagers and young parents who are no longer with us, or even those who are older who don’t make it anywhere near their full life expectancy.

But we cannot say which category we will be in, and we can’t say which category anyone we know or love will be in. In rediscovering love we should all be extremely grateful for the limited windows we have with everyone we know. It makes the interactions with them all the more special and important, and in treating every moment and every person with the sacredness they deserve, we enter into a level of love with others that heaven has always intended for our lives.

Teach me to number my days, that I may apply my heart to wisdom.

And my final thought in rediscovering love is this – for every person we’ve lost, we are still surrounded by love and cherished more than we could ever know.

I was really encouraged a number of years ago when I had a really deep depression dive by a message from Steven Furtick where he spoke about the death of Jesus Christ. We are told that he was followed and cheered for by thousands of people, but when he was arrested and sentenced to death, even some of the people closest to him scattered and left him alone.

But for every person that left him, he still had so many who stayed with him.

“Peter? Nathaniel? Thomas?….”

“John?”

“I’m here”.

As was his mother, his friend Mary, and so many of his other friends.

As Steven highlights, so many times we don’t even see people like John in our life cause we’re too distracted and mad at people like Peter for leaving.

Are you still angry and missing at your ex while someone else has been loving you so well? Are you still bitter at that family member or family group that you’ve not been listening to or properly receiving the love from the family that is left, or the new family you’ve started? Are you allowing yourself to miss all the friends you have in your life right now because you miss what you had in high school, in that church, in that other group, in that city?

You and I are surrounded by love. Surrounded.

And then I look to the Christmas story, and I am absolutely humbled. For all the insecurity and self doubt and negative self talk and frustrations with how I wished certain things were, this story gives me every reason to cast those things aside and never think a single hurtful thought towards myself ever again.

A little boy, in a backwater town, in an animal trough, surrounded by dung and mess and chaos.

As the song goes, “We didn’t know who You were”.

But not just the little boy, but the one who grew to give it all so I could have the chance I needed to get things right, to be the man I need to be, to enter into all that heaven has for me.

And even today, as with the original story, we can be so overwhelmed by commercial pressure and present prices and family expectations and our own idealism or disappointment that we miss right there, right there! in the middle of it all, the same gift, the same love, the same reminder that I am so freaking special and important and loved that it doesn’t matter what else may happen to me.

Even today, we didn’t know who You were.

Negativity. Doubt. Mortgages. Kids getting older. People coming and going. Uncertainty about the economy. Uncertainty about the future. Uncertainty about the fulfilment of our dreams.

Right there, in the midst, the ultimate gift, the reminder, the champion of our souls, the precious life traded for ours and given to us.

Cherished beyond all words. This love never ends.

In rediscovering love at Christmas time, do all the processing you need to. Don’t pretend you haven’t been hurt when you have – you don’t have to do that. Face the disappointment, face the challenge, face the expectation.

But at the same time, face all the people who love you, here and now, today, right now, and embrace it with your whole heart.

And see the gift, the precious gift, given to all the world at Christmas time, to tell us we matter, we will always matter, and nothing and no one can ever take that away.

Merry Christmas and may you receive the love intended for you this holiday season, and ensure you pass it on to as many people as you can.