Our Healing Wrapped up in Swaddling Clothes

One major consideration when I am on the hunt for a new house is how will it look at Christmas time. The first house we owned had a wooden banister coming down the stairs into the living room and a raised brick fireplace with a white wooden mantle. Outside, there was a large front porch that ran the length of the house, lined with white railings. While the agent showed us the property, I was thinking of white icicle lights along the front of the house, stockings hung by the chimney with care, and garland wrapping around the banister. We made so many good Christmas memories in that little house. Funny memories like the time my (now ex) husband and I could not get a Cozy Coupe together on Christmas Eve without a lot of frustration and prayer for a holiday miracle. Treasured memories like my late brother being with us for the holidays and having as much fun with the kids’ new toys as they did. Sweet memories of cookie making and tree decorating with the kids. Fun memories like Santa on a firetruck on our street each year, or the fire station yard around the corner that was turned into a play yard with Christmas lights and wooden houses, cars, and helicopters for the kids to climb on and play in.

When we moved from that beloved little first house to the Willowbrook house, it was August in Alabama, but I was already envisioning a snow-covered hill and how the house would look decked out for Christmas. That house seemed to be made for Christmas with its large picture windows, vaulted wood beam ceiling, and multiple fireplaces. My mother-in-law knew my love for the holidays and turned me loose at Hobby Lobby with instructions to pick out what I’d need to decorate the house for Christmas. The previous owners left two large trees, I had one already, inherited another from my grandmother’s house, and bought one the year we moved. I put up five full-size trees that year – a ten-foot tree in the living room, an eight-foot tree in the basement den, a six-foot tree in the master bedroom and another in the guest room of the basement, and a four-foot tree in the kids’ room. There were mini trees in other areas, plus garland, wreaths, and decorations. I loved every bit of it. I could sit in any room of the house and stare at the lights and just feel happy. So much Christmas cheer happened there. Youth Christmas parties and staff Christmas parties. Family gatherings with my mom’s kids and grandkids. Christmas Eve dinners on our “fancy dishes” that were only used that one meal of the year, then the kids opening one gift before their daddy read the Nativity story from the Bible then the book Twas the Night Before Christmas. Trying to get the kids to sleep on Christmas Eve, so Santa could come. And Christmas morning, when the kids would rush down the stairs, eager to see what gifts were waiting. The rest of Christmas was lazy, a feeling of contentment settling in…and relief that Santa had done a good job and could relax until next year.

The last year my husband was home, I could already sense differences in him, but I never imagined the changes that would come in the next year. I would have never guessed that the following holiday season would find me completely “Bah humbug” as I waited for my divorce to be final on December 20. I would not have thought I could ever hurt so badly or that memories I adored could torment and cut me. That shopping alone for the kids’ gifts would send me to a new level of loneliness or looking in the face of my infant daughter would wreck me with thoughts of her daddy not being there for her first Christmas.

Rationally, I wanted to keep the traditions for the kids’ sake and do everything I could to distract them from the hole their daddy left in our lives, but I couldn’t make rational into reality. I was just too sad. I couldn’t put up the eight- or ten-foot trees without thinking of my husband on the ladder, finishing the top. I couldn’t string lights without missing handing them to him around the tree as we shared the job. I couldn’t think about gifts without wondering his opinion. I couldn’t write gift tags without the reminder that the presents were “from [just] mom”. I couldn’t listen to carols or enjoy lights or do anything without feeling the crushing weight of his absence. I wanted to move past myself for the sake of the kids, but I was nearly paralyzed by my pain.

Then some friends stepped in to help. One couple put up trees for us in the living room and basement den and strung them with lights, leaving them ready for the kids to decorate and for me to help if I could. Another couple helped me carry on with some of the old traditions and start some new ones. They were the fun ones present when I was mentally far away. Various other friends and family encouraged and uplifted me in one way or another while I tried to get myself together enough to give the kids a good Christmas while the timing of my divorce completely shattered me.

Over the next two years, I worked – with help from God, family, and friends – to put the pieces back together. Last Christmas, I bought a shorter pre-lit tree so I didn’t need help with the top or miss the help stringing lights. I decorate my rental house with multiple trees, garlands, and wreaths and feel the joy of the season again. I write “from mom” with a sense of gratitude that God has provided for us so well with just my income. I don’t feel shattered anymore. I can look at pictures, even of Christmases past, and not feel cutting pain. The knife that used to puncture and shred me….Now it just applies a little pressure. I still know it’s there, but it doesn’t pierce me. When I see the memories on facebook or in pictures, or I have a mental image of times past, I may feel that niggle of how things used to be, but I don’t ache for them anymore. And if some unexpected thing does knock the wind out of me for a moment, it’s a temporary sadness now rather than a sad state of being. They say time heals all wounds. I say that God heals wounds in time.

On that first Christmas, when our Savior was born in a lowly stable, our healing was wrapped up with him in swaddling clothes lying in the manger (Luke 2:12). In time, at God’s appointed time some thirty-three-ish years later, Jesus would fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 53:5 and in doing so, buy our healing with His precious blood. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”