Editor’s Note: You can listen to the audio here.
I sat alone in a Denny’s off of Route 14 with a side of bacon and a ball of yarn two days before Christmas. Other diners may have wondered at this picture, a lonely traveler knitting a crooked purple scarf while watching a Christmas movie on her laptop, but there weren’t any other diners. It was just me, lonely and waiting.
For many of us, the longing of Advent is very real. Because while we may have places to go or people to see (perhaps less so this year), there is nothing like the insistence that all must be merry and bright to illuminate the hardest parts of life.
Christmas is my favorite holiday. But I remember spending this season single and avoiding the inevitable parade of happy family photos and holiday engagements on social media. I remember one Christmas spent at a Starbucks, sitting across from my boyfriend’s parents so they could warn me he was going to break my heart (they were right). I remember locking myself in my friend’s room another Christmas so I could fall apart because though her family was generous and lovely, they weren’t mine. I remember spending ten different Christmases with ten different families, estranged from my own and separated by an ocean.
Having spent many Christmases with many families, I can tell you this season is no Hallmark movie. Even in the midst of happiest families and crowded rooms, I’ve seen unmet expectations, unrealized hopes, and the pangs of past heartaches and empty seats. And so, at the risk of being an absolute downer, I want to take a small moment to put down the hot chocolate and pause Mariah Carey to acknowledge those who, for whatever reason, feel less than cheery.
If that’s you — I see you. Maybe that doesn’t bring much comfort. It’s three words on a cold digital screen in a world that’s currently hug-deprived. But you aren’t alone in your loneliness. We all bear the marks of longing in our own unique ways, but I hope by sharing some of my stories you’ll feel less alone in yours.
I see you, and I’m not the only one. And if those words still fall flat, then I pray you find comfort in finding yourself in another story: a baby born in a borrowed bed, to a family that did not understand him, to a world that would reject him. And yet his name is Emmanuel — God with us.
With us, always. With us when we feel the peace and joy his presence brings, but especially with us when we struggle to feel it. Especially with us in the moments we feel most alone.
So as we await his coming, both for Christmas present and Christmas future, as we sing carols and wish friends a happy holiday, may we remember that Jesus’s definition of a “Merry Christmas” is not one without sorrow, longing, or messiness — but one that is infinitely sweeter because he is there with us in all of it it. In laughter and rejoicing, he is there. In my moments of fear and doubt and loneliness, he is there. From manger to grave and back again, he is God with us.
He is with you.