on Christmas and a home that has come to life

There is something wonderful about family. There is something wonderful about the people that you share blood, experience, genes, home videos, and all that other stuff with. I’m sitting next to Gram on the couch. She’s resting, and I’m using every opportunity to cuddle. The room is being quietly lit with the bursts of color on the tree, Christmas music is playing lightly in the background, and the house is full of life, it seems for the first time. The smell of sugar cookies is lingering and I get up for “just one more cookie” a few times an hour, while my mom and grandpa laugh and work on Christmas dinner together. My brother lit a huge fire in the fireplace, while I set the dinner table—our respective “pride and joys.” Christmas.

Christmas is different this year. I keep stealing glances at the tree, standing tall, and beautifully decorated with decades worth of ornaments, poinsettia leaves and pine cones tucked inside as well. It’s just pretty. There are eight people, and lots of love, in the house today, double what I’m used to. Stories are being told, and mostly, there is laughter and ease. We’re taking pictures just to make sure that this isn’t a dream. It is a dream.

Christmas is different this year. Family is different this year. I sat in church today, the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service, and stifled my teary eyes as I sat, mom on my right and dad on my left, singing “Oh, Come Let Us Adore Him.” Yes, let’s. I’m twenty years old, and this is the first time in my life that I sat next to my mom and my dad during a church service, and it feels doubly appropriate that this message happened to be about Jesus bringing light into the darkest areas. So yes, let us adore him.

I love my family, and I love the holidays, but to put the two together has never been easy. Or, I guess, it has never been “whole.” Family holidays, to me, has always meant halves, or portions, split time, awkward negotiations, tension. Divorce tends to do that. They laughed when I talked of spending holidays together. It’s crazy, Kara—I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to accept it. We all love you, but there is too much history, too many complications. No doubt, there is history and complications and it’s messy. But for seventeen years, I have longed for togetherness and I truly truly believed in the very deepest part of me that it was not only possible, but that maybe, just maybe, God wanted to do a miracle.

Today, I was sandwiched between two people who, for years, have spoken to each other only out of necessity, about alimony and child support and health insurance for the kids, two people between whom there was so much hurt and unforgiveness that really, reconciliation seemed, understandably so, impossible. So when the worship team sang “Oh, Come Let Us Adore Him” this afternoon, I acknowledged that the God to whom I sing is capable of the impossible. Let me tell you about reconciliation, let me tell you about redemption.

Tonight, eight of us will sit around the table and pray over the meal, thanking God for His gift of Jesus, thanking God that we can all be together. I will try to hold back tears so as not to make anybody, mostly my brother, uncomfortable. They won’t see it, but in my heart, I will be singing to my Jesus because this holiday season, He has given me the one lasting desire of my heart. Christmas is about giving Him praise, and worshiping my Savior who came as a baby, and even still, His grace is astounding. We’ll squeeze onto two couches and open gifts, fewer than last year because we’ve certainly all learned a bit about money, and a bit about Christmas. We’ll all be proud of the dinner that grandpa made, and the crafty gifts that my brother welded for each person; Mom and Gram will whisper “grown up woman” things back and forth to each other, mom and dad will joke about Christmases long since forgotten, things that happened prior to my memory; grandpa will take pictures, and Tyler will sit with his wonderful girlfriend, whom he really adores. Gerald will fall asleep half way through, and hopefully dad will like his remote control airplane. Even if he doesn’t, Tyler and I will be acting like four year olds, giddily shaking boxes and ripping off wrapping paper as if the very meaning of life (or something...) is inside. Tonight, eight lives that were once separated by bitterness and fear and all things dark will weave together and bring restoration and love and peace and joy. Talk about Christmas.

All season long, we talk and talk and talk about how Jesus is the light of the world, lighting up the darkest areas, bringing light into our desperate and dampened lives. My family has become His playground. Today, I celebrate Jesus in a way that I have never celebrated. Today, I celebrate my God who conquers the impossible and explodes my family into life, together.