Finding Joy in a Complicated Christmas
By Elizabeth Laing Thompson
On Christmas night in 2005, I watched my father hold my daughter, his first grandchild, for the first time. Only an hour old, she blinked bright eyes up at him, and his eyes filled with tears. I felt a riot of emotions: transcendent joy, heart-bursting gratitude, and lurking underneath … a shadow of fear. Watching Dad, I couldn’t forget his announcement two nights earlier: “I have cancer.”
We’d spent years praying for our miracle baby, and here on Christmas night, God had given us the greatest gift of our lives. Our joy should have been complete, but a fearful voice kept whispering, This joy is fragile. What if Dad’s not here next Christmas? I couldn’t help but ask God, Tonight of all nights, why can’t we just be happy?
Maybe you know the feeling of a complicated Christmas. For one day, we long to feel peace and to celebrate unhindered—but a chair at Christmas dinner sits empty. Work and finances are overwhelming. A relationship feels distant. We might sing “joy to the world,” but the joy in our world is incomplete.
Two thousand years ago, celestial music—the first Christmas carols—rang out to celebrate Jesus’ birth…
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