For many, the holidays are a break from regular routine to reorient to what is meaningful. For others, it feels like they have entered into a demilitarized zone. It’s a block of days on the calendar that are fraught with tension, heartache, and ambivalence. It is not a time adorned with fond memories of bonding over savory meals, entertaining stories, and shared laughter. Instead, it’s overshadowed by dread and a strong desire to hibernate and emerge on January 2 of the next year.
For instance, singles (including widows, separated, or divorced) may be invited to join existing families for a holiday meal. While they are grateful, the nauseating ache of being an outsider is unrelenting. And sadly, some singles have nowhere to go. No one is expecting them at their table.
Furthermore, families may outwardly portray mutual respect and understanding, but the pretense can’t dissipate dysfunction and disconnection. Sibling rivalry is complicated by comparison and favoritism, and parent-child relationships are heavy-laden with fear, guilt, shame, contempt, blame, and absence of protection and safety. Years of misunderstandings, unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, and in some cases, rage, have eroded marriages and other relationships.
Women longing to cultivate life through pregnancy or adoption are confronted with their barrenness. Each greeting card of families in coordinating outfits and picturesque smiles against a scenic backdrop make grief, anger, jealousy, and envy inescapable and undeniable.
Like an old sweatshirt, ambivalence, apathy, and resignation are well worn. We try to convince ourselves that we don’t care. We shrug our shoulders, only raise an eyebrow, and are nonchalant. We utter, “It doesn’t matter”, “Whatever,” and “I’m fine.” Or we are quick to point fingers. We justify the log in our eye while arguing about the speck in others.
It’s painful for some of us to have expectations because expectations equal hurt and disappointment. But those same expectations reveal our desires for genuine connection and a felt sense for belonging. We long to be welcomed, chosen, seen, and known. That’s why we willingly abandon the lessons from the previous year and return to the doorsteps of another family gathering. We hope and dream with naivety, despite history repeatedly telling the story of disappointment that leaves us resolving, “Never again” and “I’m done”.
Hope is powerful. It is defiant. It is risky, vulnerable, and sometimes, dangerous.
Unfortunately, “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12). Unmet hope makes the soil fertile for futility and fatalism to take root and eventually pervade like weeds. The saying, “It is what it is” encapsulates this cynical feeling.
Consequently, we are left holding the broken pieces of being overlooked, dismissed, and isolated. We are reminded of the dark void of loneliness from estranged relationships and separation from loved ones due to death, unmet needs, and empty and fleeting promises.
If this is how some of us or in our communities experience holidays, how can we navigate with compassion and care? And is there another way to respond other than fight, flight, or freeze?
During Jesus’ journey to the cross, he greatly needed the presence and comfort of others. He turned to his inner circle of friends (Mark 14:33), but each one abandoned him (Mark 14:50). Even His Father forsook him. The height of his desertion culminated on the cross as he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
While Jesus did not experience the nuances of your personal social dynamic and specific family relationships, he is not without understanding. He is intimately experienced with loneliness, anguish, betrayal, mockery, disdain, contempt, and brutality. He is acquainted with brokenness including relationships and the failure of a justice system to “act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly” (Micah 6:8).
Jesus’ life and humanity transforms the Passover Meal to a meal of a new and better promise. The tangible symbols of His body broken and his blood poured out in the cup, invite us to hope with faith and love. It calls us to remember the great exchange between Christ and us; all of him for all of us.
Imagine for a moment, in the midst of palpable tension around your Thanksgiving table or as you feel the need to read the room and the mood of others on Christmas morning, Jesus interrupts the chaos and angst. He desires and seeks to personally share a meal with you. He draws your attention to himself, beginning with knowing and speaking your name.
[Your name, your name]. This is my body broken for you. Take. Eat. Do this in remembrance of me.
[Your name, your name], This is my blood poured out for you. Take. Drink. Do this in remembrance of me.
Do you notice your body’s reaction? What happens inside of you as you imagine your name being called and as you picture receiving from Jesus the bread and the cup? How does your body respond as you eat and drink?
I picture the lines of our Savior’s face, compassionate and grieved for where I’ve come from and where I am and yet, daringly and defiantly exuding joy because he knows the promises he has for me. He sees. He cares. I am not alone. He welcomes me to his table and his resurrection morning. I can come just as I am—weary, disheartened, and broken. And there, His presence is enough.
His grace is sufficient; His power is made perfect in my weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). He gives us courage to stand in the intersection of already and not yet—to make room for our bodies to grieve. For Jesus promises that grief will turn into joy (John 16:20). He gives us boundaries and limits that honor both sides of horizontal relationships.
If there is brokenness, fragility, and severity in your life, they may only intensify during the holidays. However, Jesus authors a new and better story.
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corin. 4:16-18)