12 days of Christmas

I have never really understood Christmas.  I remarked to my spiritual director last year that I just didn't "get" God as a little baby.  Wise priest that he is, he smiled, laughed and said, "Knowing you, that doesn't surprise me."  I knew why he laughed but at the same time I felt like screaming, "Why are you laughing?  Why don't I get it?"

I finally decided to take this frustration, this lack of understanding to prayer.  I began to pray, "Help me to fathom just a little bit of why in the world an omnipotent God became a baby.  I just don't get it."  Well, I suppose that I understood a bit of the Incarnation on an intellectual level but that knowledge had yet to penetrate my heart.

Another thing about Christmas is that it is perhaps the hardest time of the whole year for me.  My birthday is on the 22nd and has always been a bit of a disappointment.  My birthday blues are very dark.  I imagine that this has something to do with the 22nd falling at an exceptionally busy time of year that usually brings sickness, lots of snow, lack of sunlight and failed birthday parties.  It's awfully hard to remember someone's birthday, let alone a gift, when it comes only days before the biggest gift-giving extravaganza of the year.

The combination of the birthday and Christmas is exacerbated by the fact that we live a long way away from my sisters and parents and thus the holidays can also be very, very lonely.  Thus, all of these factors come colliding together in a bit of a perfect storm.  Perhaps I was set up for not 'getting' Christmas.

I do, however, 'get' faith and have never had a doubt that if the Lord wants someone to understand something then He will allow that understanding to come.  The answer is there; I had just never asked the question before.

However, this Christmas Eve I did ask the question.

We found ourselves sitting two rows from the front of the church at the 5pm Christmas Eve mass.  Smack dab in front of the almost life-sized nativity scene.  I couldn't help but stare at that creche and beg, What does it  mean?

A few thoughts immediately came to mind.  The first was about Mary and Joseph arriving at the inn.  Not until a few days before when I had read Enid Blyton's Christmas Story to the boys had I realised that the inn was actually really, really physically crowded.  After all, if there was no room at the inn it was because it was filled with people.  Therefore it was probably also filled with noise and smells and food and drink and a whole host of other sensory events.  These are all things that I can handle, even relish, when well-rested, happy and not at some pivotal point in my life.  Giving birth is not one of those times.  If it were I arriving great with child at the door to the inn I would have been thankful to have been given the stable.  (Dave would have hoped for a room but I would have been praying that something 'outback' was available.)  Being a bit of a closet introvert (and insomniac), I would have gladly accepted straw and large domestic animals over people.  I wondered if Our Lady had felt the same.

And then I began to think about the actual circumstances of Our Lord's birth:  at what time was He born?  When exactly did the shepherds show up?  Who was there?  Who wasn't there?  Did Our Lady want her mother there?

Having given birth five times now I couldn't help but compare Our Lord's birth and Our Lady's labour and delivery with my own experiences.  And I realised something.  I am a control freak and one of the things that I like about the birth of a child is that it is completely out of my control. Thus, labour and delivery is one of the only times in my life when I actually feel like I can let go because I am acutely aware that I have no control.  However, until that first contraction, I futilely try to orchestrate the whole shebang.  And inevitably I fail.

I am never as rested as I want to be.  In fact, I have usually lost a whole night's sleep.  My mom is very rarely the one who sees us off to the hospital as she is 1000 miles away.  Only two of my children have been born into the hands of my family doctor.  The twins were delivered by an on-call obstetrician, Benjamin by the emergency room physician and Sarah was delivered by two nurses as the paramedics wheeled me into the room.

Nothing ever goes according to my plan.  And, inevitably, this is a good thing.  I arrive at the birth of each of my children thoroughly and utterly spent.  I am weepy and sore and don't want to see anyone other than Dave (and maybe my mom) walk through the door of my hospital room.  I even find it hard to answer the phone.  (My poor in-laws learned this the hard way after Isaac's birth!)

And somehow in the first few minutes of our deacon's homily at Christmas Eve mass I thought of all of this.  And it began to dawn on me that Our Lord was most likely born in the wee hours of the morning and Our Lady had no one but St. Joseph there to help.  No mother, no father, no midwife, no familiarity.  And I imagine that she was very tired and just wanted (oh, please) a good night's sleep.  And then a bunch of dirty shepherds have the gall to show up -  in the middle of the night.  None of it seems fair, does it?  And I just want life to be fair; I want my life to be fair!  And it isn't.   None of my life nor Our Lord's birth is the way that I would have planned it.  Yet it is the way that God planned it:  perfectly perfect.

And so, as I contemplated our Lord's birth and His Mother's experience, I was able to understand just a little bit better that the Incarnation is about Our Maker coming into the messiness of our lives out of love.  His arrival doesn't make things fair, or tidy up my life or balance my sacrifices with what I think should be my rewards.  His birth certainly doesn't move me any closer to my parents or sisters.  But His birth changes everything because He comes to be with us.  He comes to us in the midst of our dirty straw, our smelly animals, our shepherd-visitors and He accepts our meagre offering of swaddling clothes, whatever those might be.  He entrusts Himself to our care and to our love and He needs us.

Despite this moment of enlightenment, I turned away from the creche and tuned back into our deacon's homily.  He was speaking about little babies and how little babies only know how to do one thing.  I thought that the one thing would be some cheeky comment about pooping and spitting up; but it wasn't.  Instead, he said that the one thing that little babies know how to do is give love and receive love, with complete abandon.  I suddenly grasped more fully what it meant that Love was born on Christmas morn.

I love little babies.  I can't fathom our home without them.  I get teary-eyed just thinking about a 'last' baby.  They exhaust me, they frustrate me, they make me cry, they wreak havoc on my hormones, I often swear, Never again!; but I can't help but love them desperately.  I love to hold them, to look at them, to nurse them and to know them.  And what do they do so perfectly?  They love me and receive my love, without question, without judgement.  They love me unconditionally.

And then I knew in a heart sort of way that God as a wee little baby is simply about loving Him and allowing Him to love me, unconditionally.  I find it very difficult, and often uncomfortable,  to receive love and to be cared for.  But I don't find it hard to let little babies love me.  I find it incredibly easy, natural and comfortable to receive the love of a child.  In fact, I feel most myself, most truly me in the company of children.  So, this year I will try to get to know the Baby Jesus; to hold Him in my heart as a newborn babe and allow Him to love me in that form.  This will bring exhaustion and tears and the ruin of my plans; but it will all be for the good and I will know that I am loved.

And together we will grow up.