Bittersweet Christmas

It's that time of year ago...

That time of presents and trees and Santa and... oh, wait.

No, it's not THAT time.

That time of Jesus.

It's THAT time.

Last night at a Ladies Christmas Party, a beautiful young woman with a beautiful voice sang a beautiful song called "Breath of Heaven." Its a song written from the perspective of Mary. And it got me thinking, as pretty much everything Mary-related does this time of year, about the mother of God.

I know this is a happy time of year, when we celebrate the only gift that really matters, the gift of God's love through his Son, Jesus.

But it's a bittersweet time, too, and anything about Mary makes me remember the sad side of Christmas.

I remember very clearly one of the saddest moments I have had as a mother--- I was sitting in the hospital with my brand new baby, my first baby, my little Bean, staring at her sweet little face in the middle of the night. And it hit me--- I cannot protect her. One day, too soon, this sweet little face is going to be crumpled up in heartache over the first time a friend betrays her. Over the first time she is invisible to the boy she likes. Over the first time her heart is broken. And I can't stop it.

Bean was born at the start of the Christmas season, and I remember thinking that night about Mary. We read about the angel appearing to her and her faithfulness. But we don't read about her sorrow. We don't read about what must have been happening in her heart--- she knew she was carrying the Son of God,; she knew she was carrying the Messiah. She knew she was carrying a baby she would love with all her heart. And she knew, she MUST have known, being a Jewish woman, what her baby would face in His life. She knew, for 9 months and 30 years after that, that the baby she loved with all her heart would face severe rejection, ridicule, hatred, and eventually a beating that left Him unable to be recognized followed by a horrible death. And she couldn't stop it.

And I am brought to tears now every time I think about this woman who not only faced the worst heartache any woman can face--- the death of their child--- but lived the majority of her life and all of His life with that looming on the horizon. And then I realize that not only did Mary face this--- God the father faced this as well. With even more knowledge. With even more foresight.  But He loved us enough to do it. He loves us THAT much.

I'm not trying to be a downer, but let's be honest--- Christmas is nothing without the sacrifice of the cross to follow it. If all we think about on Christmas is joy, we are missing something--- a HUGE something--- that this sweet baby who's birthday we are celebrating lived a short thirty-something years on earth and died a horrific death.

And that, on top of that, Christ lived his whole life KNOWING not only that He was destined to die, but that He was destined to die in that horrible way. Do you realize that? That as a Jewish child, Jesus had to be fully versed in the scriptures by the time he reached "adulthood" in the Jewish world--- 13. And the scriptures clearly tell of the kind of death the Messiah would face. And crucifixion was a VERY common death in that day; so common that he probably walked by men dying this death on the side of the road on a daily basis. So, by the time he was 13, Jesus faced every day knowing the death that was to come to Him, and he chose to do it anyway.

Is Christmas joyful? Of course! God loves us! We are washed in His blood because of what started on Christmas. But it's nothing without the sacrifice and the sadness that comes with it...