When the Darkness Encroaches Too Close: Christmas at the Solstice

On the eve of the darkest night of the year, the old demons, anxiety, discouragement and ugly perfectionism slink up through the shadows. My skin crawls with the darkness. Tears don't wash me clean.

I'm overwhelmed by some projects greater than my skillset, by to-do lists with more items than moments in my day. There isn't enough of me and and what there is of me seems impotent and I'm groping for grace. It's easy to forget the truth in the dark. Sadness wrings the bones dry and finally late I give up, find my way to bed, pull the covers high.

I wake in the dim of the winter solstice. I don't feel the light. I am living advent, aching for the dawning.






Mama calls. She'll take all our due library books back to the city this morning if I can drive them over. Coming home through bluing morning, I miss the returned poetry books already. A crow sits atop the bare maple tree at the corner. I turn up our gravel road and watch it fly into sky, black wings over snow. The shortest day of the year needs words to light it.

I come home and do laundry. I sort closets. I make menus. I try to beat back the black by doing the next thing. ... and yet. I cry. I pray. I count graces. I'm taken back at how fast we can slide from good to not good, at how fragile a soul is, at how dark the dark really is and how wrenching it is to battle back to the light. I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Come evening, I'm battle weary but the point is I've stayed in the battle and I've done war on the knees. Just a few moments more, light candles for one of the last nights of advent, and then to the pillow and the blessed slumber.

I get the matches.

And in the flicking of the wooden stick on the side of the matchbox, Words studied with women, phrases from John 3, kindle in memory, and the flame torches the dark.

The Light has come into the world...

... those who follow the true way come to the light, and it shows that the things they do were done through God."

John 3:18-21

Wick after wick catches and the room glows.

And the choral strains and words of George Frideric Handel's Messiah accompanies the flickering dance. Child turns the page of the Oratioand I'm struck on the side of Poet's Words and the heart blazes:

... You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, "Here is your God!"

Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

And the universe converges and Truth ignites night and I remember.

During the darkest days of the year, the world celebrates that Light has come into the world, a dawning over the land of the shadow of death, and in the warmth of that halo, we have hope.

In that ring there is nothing to fear for it illuminates that all the good being done in the dark chaos of a day is done through God, that He carries, that He sustains, that He conquers.

That light in the night sky that dazzled the shepherds, that blinding brilliance of the angel of the Lord who brought good tidings of joy to all peoples, that Bright and Morning Star that splits this murky world open, it is for me now, too. He is a Refiner's Fire, and I want the Light.

I kneel down with the Child and I come to the Light, only Light there is, and we turn the pages of the book, read these words of the Messiah, and the paintings burn with light and the music fills us with His Poetry and I can feel the shadows burn away. I breathe again. Light gives oxygen.

Her and I, we smile.














She turns the page and there is His back and the stripes and our eyes meet and we remember, the price of the Light that pierced the dark and shattered the black.

I warm my hands over flames and by Him I am healed.




Lord God... I simply Come to the Light.
That's all I need this Christmas.
In the dark, to rest in the healing warmth of You.

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