Published With Thanksgiving

Scrooge, in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, truly finds the spirit of the season while standing over his own grave. Despite the reminder of the past and the reality of the present, he only feels the “comfort and joy” of the Yuletide when he is face to face with mortality. For me, it is mortality that is making this season so darn difficult.

This Advent will mark the first year since my father-in-law passed. Anyone I’ve ever talked to or any book I’ve read on the subject tells you that it’s the second holiday that is the most difficult. This rings true for me. The relief and rejoicing that the suffering was over along with the shock of his passing made last Christmas easier than this one. And while Scrooge, after getting a healthy dose of mortality, woke the next morning to dance around the room and be very merry indeed, I’m struggling to hold on to a taste of that familiar feeling of Christmas.

I have been attempting for over a week to write about what I suppose is something I am not alone in struggling with during this time of year. But either the emotions are too close or I have been too intent on finding some comfort to share—comfort I struggle to find myself.

Last night, as I sat on the couch in a bad mood because one more draft had gone south, I thought about the line from “I Wonder as I Wander.” Specifically, I thought about how Jesus “had come for to die.” There was a time when I didn’t care for that line. It sounded too much as if all Christ’s earthly ministry was just extraneous material.

But then my wife reminded me that being born meant dying. There is no other way out of this side of reality (aside from the Parousia—the Return, which seems so very distant). And God knew that getting involved with mortal flesh meant dying in some form or fashion.

I suppose there was also the other side of that coin—experiencing the death of someone near and dear. It is, I believe, very different to encounter death on the Heaven-side of things than on the Earthly. I have to wonder if God-Enfleshed struggled to find joy or simply ached when those he’d come to love were no longer within reach of an embrace or able to sit across the table at dinner.

Somewhere within this, I must think there is comfort for those who are grieving. Perhaps it is in the knowledge that, in the Incarnation, we have been given the gift of a God that knows how difficult it is to face joyful times with a heart that is missing pieces. Maybe it is just that surely Jesus felt as we do and is forgiving when we must leave the room when the angels begin singing.

Or it could be simply a hope that, like Scrooge, our mourning will, eventually, be turned to dancing.

Comforter, comfort those who are missing someone.