Here Comes the Son

Every year at this time, I scratch around in my bleak existence to locate a crumb of God’s goodness and proclaim that if God can align the molecules that create that crumb, surely he can come to earth as a human child and save me.

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” (Matthew 15:27)

But this year is different.

The season of my life is changing.  In the past, I would throw my efforts into a goal and the energy was sucked into an always hungry black hole.   Now when I try to make something happen, it actually happens.  I am exerting the same amount of effort but I actually get results.  It’s a miracle every time.

I once was in an automobile accident and my left shoulder was injured.  After medical treatments including injections and physical therapy, the doctor labeled my shoulder “as good as it’s going to get.”  Several years later I started my new gym obsession working out four mornings a week.  I was hyper-aware of my shoulder.  I barely challenged it each day in the weight room.

One day I sat at my office job typing on the computer and felt in my left shoulder the most excruciating physical pain I have ever experienced.  I could not breathe or even cry.  I froze, suspended in agony.  There was a scraping noise and the anatomy of my shoulder moved involuntarily.  The moment was gone.  Then the pain was gone.  My shoulder felt the best it had in years.  It never regressed.

For the past four months I have run through a cycle of emotional adjustment moments where the pain feels like death, and then a weight lifts off.  I feel better than I have in years.  Then the cycle repeats.

Change is hard.  Even good change.  Life was endlessly bleak.  Now I am getting good things.  The pain of wandering in darkness for years hits me like a random breeze that leaves me sobbing over a bowl of freshly mixed cookie dough.  So many feelings stirring all the time I often need to avoid my phone, take a walk, or get out my coloring book.

I was discussing this with someone dear to me and he started singing the Beatles.

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

 The darkness, he said, didn’t have anything to do with what I did or did not do.

“Why is the sun there now?”

 “The sun has always been there.”

“But why did it have to be dark for so long?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long will it take me to make peace with the darkness?”

Apparently, that is up to me.  Sigh.

 

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

 

I am working hard to be in the moment.  Sometimes my fear that I will miss the moment prevents me from being in the moment.  Sometimes all the feelings around the moment stir up the sadness about not having this moment before and I am dragged through the agitation cycle again.  But with each iteration, though the pain is excruciating, I feel better than I have before.

And so this Christmas is the year I am the most practically unprepared, but the most emotionally ready to welcome the Son of God into this world.  I am so thankful that I can see the sun, I am ready to see the Son.  I am afraid that I may not feel the same next year.  I am afraid I may not feel that in an hour.  But for now, I am just going to try to be in the moment . . . and roll out that tear stained cookie dough.

 

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

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