Two nights ago, I attended Christmas Eve service at church. I sat with friends from grief support group, who no doubt also envisioned the faces of those we love and have lost as we sung the lyrics to O Holy Night: "Fall on your knees, oh hear the angels voices..." Among the lit candles were both laughter and swallowed tears.
Afterward, I came home, put on Little Women, and made [an epic] grilled cheese with the Hawaiian bread roll remnants from Siblings Christmas, fresh sage, and Melissa's left over Havarti. I accompanied the snack with a little spiced whiskey and fell asleep on the sofa. No evidence of St. Nick, unless that was him and not my neighbors pounding around upstairs at three minutes to midnight. At some point I relocated to the bedroom, wiener dogs in tow.
When I woke Christmas morning, it was much different from the way I used to as a child, when my brothers and I would gleefully anticipate the day. I remember those days, fondly: back when we knew life as children. I feel more adult than child these days, to be sure, for in the words of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay "Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies."
When my two girlfriends and I entered the sanctuary a few minutes before it was to begin, the room was packed.
"Should we go up top?" J asked. "See if there are some seats in the balcony?"
"Errr," was my response, eyes scanning the downstairs foyer. "There's gotta be one or two here."
"Three. We need three," J said.
"I hate those pews upstairs, they hurt my back," I protested.
"Mine too," agreed J.
"Come, let's go to the front," K suggested.
We started toward the front of the church, kept going...kept going...and then, when we were almost on the stage, there was a spot (or three) next to our prayer team ministers. Right behind our pastor and his family. Sometimes when the instinct is to hide in the back, there is space saved, right up front.
I began attending Reality SF ten years ago, when I had moved home from New York City to continue the journey toward emotional health and face anxiety and panic attacks head on. I had achieved my wildest dream in moving to New York (with two suitcases and no contacts) and after nearly five years there, decided to leave my relationship and job behind to pursue therapy back in my native California.
California would prove all I needed to lean into the work: familial support and space enough to create art and move my body through aqua pools. I was living in Redwood City at the time, so I began looking for a church on the peninsula. Reality was the first church I encountered who openly named that in walking out this life, God has a part, and we have a part (becoming emotionally healthy spiritually is something we humans have to do, not something God is willing to do for us). This church named and acknowledged that becoming emotionally healthy was essential to flourishing in the world, spiritually and otherwise. Perhaps due in large part to the fact that the lead pastor and his wife were going through their own therapeutic and interpersonal work at the time.
At Christmas Eve service, the only place where we were able to find seats was directly behind the pastor and his family. Which maybe wouldn't be as impactful as it was if he hadn't candidly shared over the church's 14 year tenure how he and his wife struggled to have kids for over a decade. That they were not able to conceive until they had done their own relational and therapeutic work. Only then, it appeared, something shifted in the spiritual and supernatural world which allowed fruitfulness to explode into their physical world. "Then," he said recently, "the babies came."
Sitting behind this young family, with their three littles; one strapped to his mama's chest, another crawling all around her limbs, the eldest diligently applying stickers to her hands and shooting curious glances our way, felt like witnessing a miracle. Ten years ago--- before moving to Seattle for seminary, developing vulnerability in community, and loving and losing Brandon --- I remember hearing the pastor tell the story of his and his wife's longing for a family. Back when the reality of the little, thriving family in front of us was an impossible thing.
I have been praying for the redemption of impossible things. Namely, the redemption of the loss of the life of the man I envisioned building a future with. The redemption of the life of the man who made me laugh, who got me, whom it only took a cheap pastry from 85 Degrees or a sunset to make overwhelmingly happy. The man who was everyone's best friend, who was somehow allowed to be violently and tragically taken from us...I have been praying for the redemption of that extraordinary loss.
My reality is that I am experiencing Joy this Christmas, in friends, family, in church community. But Sorrow, is also right there, as little children dance under fake snow in delight and indulge in cookies after service...See, I wanted all of that with him. I wanted everything with him. The night before the man I loved was violently, tragically, taken from this planet, I dreamed out loud with girlfriends of having children with him.
So, I look for Joy. She is here. As I force my wiener dogs into ass less pajamas in the company of friends. As I play with my nephews and laugh with my brothers and sisters. In the community groups of which I am a part. In friends who use miles to be with me every December since this happened. But damn it if sometimes I don't just miss his feet in my feet, his laugh intermingling with mine. Damn it if I don't still envision the brown skinned, wide eyed children we would have had together, dancing on the church patio underneath fake snow. I would have really loved that. I think I already did. Sorrow shows up, and makes herself known. "Joy and Sorrow are sisters," writes Macrina Wiederkehr. "They live in the same house."
I am looking for the redemption of an impossible thing.
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