Christmas Lessons

Each day the mailbox has been full.  Each day I have brought the mail in and opened each card one by one.  My fridge is full of beautiful Christmas pictures of friends and family. With each envelope opened I prepared myself for the overwhelming feeling of wanting to cry.  This Christmas season started out for me as a pity party. I distinctly remember saying last year "this will probably be our last Christmas without a baby", well that statement came back to haunt me with a vengeance.  There would be no Christmas card picture with a new bundle of joy.

I have realized my greatest spiritual need is to know deep within my heart that God is still for me. To understand God's peace, hope, and love in light of still being childless.  I have built up walls around my heart because it simply hurts too much sometimes to try and understand.  Well, this Christmas season the wall has been slowly crumbling.  Even through the hurt of not having a Christmas baby God has been whispering to my heart "I am for you."

It started with a wonderful woman at my church who wanted to share some scripture with me that she is memorizing. Psalm 113:9 "He gives the childless woman a family, making her a happy mother."  My initial reaction- he gives that to everyone but me, or maybe that is metaphorical.  She simply said, "Crystal, if God said it, we know it is true.  I am holding him to it." Her faith continues to amaze me.

The whisper continued when I found a friend's blog about longing.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  She said that God doesn't put a longing in our lives to torture us with it, he puts it there to fulfill it in his time.  I have been feeling that this longing for a family will never be met, and that God is simply trying to break me with it. What a sad view of a loving father who longs to fill my longings in the best way possible.  I desperately needed to hear that truth.

The whispering continued at church on Christmas Eve.  The sermon was on hope. Jesus Christ is hope for all people.  I prayed in bed that night that I would find all of my hope in the baby that saved the world.  On Christmas morning I opened a gift from my parents that was a necklace with one word on it, hope.  My parents want me to wear it until I have my baby in my arms.  I will do this, but it will be a reminder to me that my hope is to be in Him each day, not the hope of a baby.

Then last night I had dinner with my sweet extended family, and my great uncle who has had more health problems than humanly possible told me of his joy.  He joyfully prepared Christmas breakfast for hundreds of truckers.  He started a ministry to truckers 9 years ago, and that is how he spends Christmas morning each year.  My great uncle has no circumstances in which to rejoice over, or have hope in, but his hope in the Lord is what gives him joy. He serves so joyfully through the worst.  I was breaking in the presence of someone who truly understands what life is about.

Last but not least my quiet time this morning.  Not really wanting to read I sat down and simply flipped open my Bible.  Psalm 118: 5-7 " In my distress I prayed to the Lord and the Lord answered and set me free.  The Lord is for me, so I will have no fear.  Yes, the Lord is for me, he will help me. I will look in triumph on those who hate me."

The Lord is for me.  I hope to understand fully that the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone shows me that the Lord is always for me.  This was my Christmas lesson.