This time of year I begin each day staring into the harsh blue glare of my Verilux Happy Light. Talk about your #rudeawakening. But “they” say it helps so I do what “they” tell me because this time of year carries with it an abundance of sadness. Winter Solstice has come and gone and this morning brings with it some much-needed bright natural sunshine and I’ll happily take every minute more of it I can get each day.
The holidays are a mixed bag for most of us, aren’t they? Winter’s stark landscape against this backdrop of SO. MUCH. DARKNESS makes it hard to love the life we have, with all of it’s disappointment, death, loneliness, unmet expectations….and so much more. “So this is what it looks like to be a ‘have not,'” we think to ourselves.
Whether we’re aware of it or not, the person we present to the world is largely not who we really are. The identities we construct are an attempt to gain love, and to get us safely and successfully through life. But when these handcrafted masks sustain a fracture, our clumsy attempts to keep the thing perfectly positioned are just too much. So we give in to the sadness or the addiction or whatever it takes to keep us up and running. Maybe we figure out how to disappear completely into the darkness until the gaping hole heals and hope no one will notice our absence. Or maybe we cake on another layer of plaster, hope that it holds, and soldier through. Eat, drink and be merry, y’all.
But what if the resultant rifts and chasms of our suffering actually carry the possibility of transforming light with it? And what if this searing light of suffering that literally pulls the rug out from under our happy life is the only way to our knees? From this vantage point, we are small and weak and childlike. We can’t save ourselves from the wolves that are surely at the door in such a position of vulnerability.
What we don’t realize is that this posture places us squarely in front of the beautifully blinding light that exposes our true identity, created in love and by Love and has always had access to the abundance of every good and perfect gift that comes from that Father (and Mother) of Light.
Could it change the way we see the mixed bag of sorrow and joy that is our life? Could we learn to celebrate the gifts we’ve received (many, undeservedly) AND live with acceptance and hope that Jesus - Light of the world, God with us, our Emmanuel – flows through suffering-produced cracks and fissures ever so freely, bringing with Him EVERYTHING we need. Christ in us, our Hope of glory.
So when you think you can’t take another moment of it, STOP. Shift the focus of your attention from all that you have or don’t have and gaze into the Light.
THAT’S what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
