Bread of Tears

In 2005 I learned what lament has to do with Christmas.  So now, when things like Psalm 80 pop up in the lectionary around this time of year, I don't think it's weird anymore.  2005 was the year we first tried to celebrate the season of joy and togetherness with a hole in the middle of our family. It was almost exactly six months after my brother died, and it was the first real attempt we had made at being together as a family since IT happened.

Thinking back on it, the worst idea in the world was to try to go on like nothing was missing.  Michele and I packed up on Christmas day and drove across Pennsylvania with a two year old and a five month old baby, a day earlier than we planned just to surprise my Mom.  And it was a surprise.  And it was a happy moment.  But it was just a drop of light in a vast emptiness.

Because no amount of presence could fill the absence.

Because we were trying to deny the need to lament.

Because we were trying to sing Joy to the World, when there was no joy in our hearts.

I think that's the worst thing about the holidays for people who are living with loss: everybody seems so oppressively happy, and they like to tell you about it.  And no amount of gifting or gluttony can really even distract you for more than a moment from the massive black hole in your life, and you just wish that somehow you could feel a different way, but you don't, and every reminder of how out of phase you are with the rest of the world just feeds the void.

This will be the eighth Christmas living with the presence of an absence, eating the bread of tears.  Honestly, you kind of get to like the taste.  You actually come to appreciate the difference for what it is, and I think that's the place of lament in a season of joy, to remind you of how empty the glitz and materialism that have overshadowed the birth of Christ really are.

Here's a weird thing: one of the things I wish I could do at Christmas time is get into a rip-roaring, rum-soaked argument about something ridiculous with my brother.  I don't want a perfect Christmas, I don't want to sit around quietly reflecting on the blessings of family, I want to call him a bunch of names and have him call me some.  I want to be mad at him, amused by him or annoyed at him, I want something, anything that would mean his presence instead of his absence.

I want everyone who has the luxury of living with their actual, annoying, messed up, ridiculous, spiteful, jealous, conniving, gossiping, rude and otherwise repugnant family, to take a minute to appreciate them.

Because they're there, and they're what you've got.

I'm getting to a point, where I'm glad that I know the difference.  I'm not sure I'm all the way to peace and acceptance, but it might just be on the horizon.

It is a testament to God's grace that it is possible to transmute the poison of grief and loss, and turn it into a gift of awareness.  The refrain of Psalm 80 is: "Restore us, O God of hosts: let your face shine, that we may be saved."

That is the prayer of people who have faced the void, and felt the emptiness.  That is the prayer of people who are walking in darkness, yearning for a great light.  Maybe we'll never really get the "real" meaning of Christmas until we live through a few dark holy days.