“Please, babe, can you climb into the attic and get the presents down?” I wearily begged my husband, who had been throwing up for the past 24 hours. “We have to have presents on Christmas Day for the kids?”
With a pale face, he looked back at me. “Can’t we just celebrate on a different day? I don’t think I have the strength to do it.”
“I’ll just do it myself, then.” I stubbornly turned and attempted to pull my nine-month-pregnant self up the ladder.
Dark shadows circled my eyes as I had spent the last two days taking care of two toddlers who had been projectile vomiting on me and everything else close. Exhaustion had long before set in.
Nothing felt right. Negative emotions swirled within me.
Eight months prior, I had opened Pandora’s Box by starting my inner healing journey. Depression and anxiety had battered me like waves crashing in a storm on the rocks. Bam. Bam. Bam. Over and over again. Flashbacks broke through my consciousness like shards of horror movies during the day.
This was Christmas, and I was desperately grasping onto anything that would float that made Christmas seem happy. My babies would have their Christmas if it killed me. And climbing up that rickety ladder trying to keep myself balanced with my blossomed belly may have well been the end of me.
The day after Christmas, the unwelcome Christmas visitor of the stomach virus hit me with a vengeance. I had never been so sick. About to give birth is hard enough, but to do so when you are vomiting up Christmas dinner is just a different level.
Labor pains crashed with a vengeance as we rushed to the hospital. It seemed everything was wrong. The hospital was overfilled, so I stayed in a triage bed in a triage room for the entire time. The epidural didn’t take right, I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic, and I found myself with an oxygen mask on my face as my blood pressure took a dive. Weakened from the past few months of trauma and a virus, I felt at the complete end of myself, barely able to push this baby out.
My Christmas baby came anyway, as babies do.
And so did another one…
Sometimes we try to make everything perfect for Christmas, to create a façade of peace, joy, and happiness. Sometimes we are just grasping for something good, for some hope in the middle of chaos.
If you are a survivor of abuse, you very well may have a horrible mix of pain, hurt, and trauma mixed in with guilt of what the holidays should look like this time of year. Many times, abusers intentionally try to abuse their victims, especially well on special occasions like Christmas and other days that are supposed to be good. I know that happened to me.
And yet Christ came…
I think sometimes, because we hear the story so much, coupled with the pain, disappointment, and disillusionment that can be overwhelming, we many times miss the beautiful redemption of it all.
Jesus Christ came right in the middle of our mess, our pain, and our trauma. He was born in the lowest state into an impoverished, war-torn, chaotic world under the thumb of an extremely abusive rule who sought to snuff Him out.
He was despised, rejected, carrying our sorrows, and His own people eventually crucified Him.
As a vulnerable infant laid in a manager where they placed the unbundled newborn lambs set aside for sacrifice, Jesus came.
Dirty, low-life (they were considered the lowest in Jewish rank) shepherds came to greet Him.
Messy. Imperfect. In the messiest and most imperfect of circumstances, the perfect lamb of God came anyway. He left it all. All of heaven. All of the glory, power, and perfection of heaven. Still, He came.
Why? Why did He come? Why did He come that way?
To heal the brokenhearted, to set the prisoners free. He came to seek and save us, the least of these. He came into our pain, into our suffering, into our sorrow to make a way for us to come out of it, to have a relationship with God, to become a part of His family. He desperately wanted to reach us, to save us. To become one of us so that he could eventually take all of our pain, our sorrows, and our suffering on Himself.
I can personally attest to this.
He has always come. Every single time I’ve called to Him. He has come. And He keeps coming.
Into my pain, into my mess, into my less-than-perfect self – far less than perfect.
He comes and brings light. He comes and brings love. He comes and takes my hand and leads me out of my prison. He comes and heals my broken heart. Again. And again. And again.
And He will do that for you too.
I just felt like someone needs to hear that today. Merry Christmas.
Featured Image by Pexels from Pixabay
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