Another Christmas down....

My family doesn't have much luck when it comes to Christmas. To us, it's When Bad Things Happen.

It all started even before I was born. My father's mother, my grandma Mable, died of cancer in early January, 1964, right after Christmas. It was 5 months before I was born. I don't remember her, of course, but I know the stories, and I have the quilt that my great aunt made for her while she was sick.

Despite her death around the holidays, my childhood Christmases were full of joy and gifts and anticipation. No problem there. But then Christmas took a turn for the worse again in 1997. My other grandmother, Edna Wistrom died on December 23, 1997. And then my mother died suddenly, unexpectedly, tragically, exactly three years later, on December 23, 2010.

I always get a little depressed right before the holidays. This year was no exception. I fight it. I try to fill the season with activity, parties, gift-giving, and advent readings to help me keep my mind focused on what it's really about: waiting for Christ. But this year I felt like I was losing the fight. I was too lazy to put up a Christmas tree, although I did pick up some cheap greens from Trader Joe's for the mantle. A lonely stocking hung from our mantle. It was a stocking David's grandmother knit for him when he was young. I had stuck it in a trunk in the living room after his sister-in-law sent it to us a few month ago, so it was easy to pull out. I was too lazy to dig through boxes in our storage room to find my stocking. I barely listened to any Christmas music.

I'm not sure why the season pulls me into the dark depths of depression. I suppose the anniversary of my mom's death, and my grandmothers' deaths has something to do with it. And a reminder that here David and I are, a year older, and still waiting for our adopted child to appear on our doorstep. Christmas is a bummer without kids around. And the fact that our family -- my siblings and nieces and nephews -- are all scattered, so it's hard for us to get together for the holiday. And David's parents are both in a nursing home.

But I think the reality, is, many people experience the same thing around Christmas. Our culture has created a picture of Christmas: A beautiful, complete, healthy family gathered around the Christmas tree opening gifts on Christmas morning. Fireplace roaring. Cinnamon rolls in the oven. You get the idea. Maybe that was your experience of Christmas this year. It has been mine in the past. But even those perfect pictures typically aren't so perfect. Let's all face it: Life is so not picture-perfect most of the time, as hard as we strive to make it that way.

I have fond memories of childhood Christmases, spent with family and cousins and visits to aunts and uncles and grandparents. Of opening gifts and being thrilled with a new toy or piece of clothing. Of finding fun items in my stocking. Of a traditional Swedish Christmas Eve meal with my grandparents and cousins. We'd read the Christmas story, and we'd celebrate Christ's birth. But of course, when you're young, it's all about the gifts....

But these days, I'd really prefer to just skip over Christmas completely. I wouldn't mind if I could just fast-forward from Thanksgiving to January 1.

I am not a child anymore. And the reality of life, and how imperfect it really is, has caught up with me.

It seemed like a cruel joke when I got a call at 5:00 a.m. on Christmas Day from my brother, telling me that dad was in the ICU with a dissected aorta. A very serious condition that was life-threatening. Seriously? 10 years almost to the day of my mother's death? My dad is in the ICU?

David and I were in Springfield, Missouri, on our way to Dallas to visit his parents. We immediately packed up our things, checked out of the hotel, and drove north to Iowa.

We didn't know if my dad would make it. The doctors offered a grim prognosis. David and I drove up I-35 silently, looking out at the frozen corn fields, slowing down when the roads were icy, jumping every time my cell phone rang with more news.

When we arrived at the hospital, my dad was still alive. In fact, the prognosis seemed a little better. The dissection was in the descending part of the aorta -- not the ascending. Apparently, that was good. But, still, things seemed touch-and-go for a few days. Would he have to have surgery? If so, there was a chance he wouldn't make it. The doctors gave us vague answers to our questions. They just didn't know what would happen. So we waited.

The ICU waiting room was well-designed, with pullout couches that allowed for a fairly good night's sleep. Families claimed corners and groups of couches as they waited. The waiting room was two stories. We had a corner on the first floor, in the back, where the TV was. But we didn't watch much TV. Instead, we talked, went into the room to visit dad, greeted numerous friends and extended family that stopped by, and tried not to worry. Mostly, we just waited.

It's exhausting to wait. Days blur into each other. Day's turn into nights. I slept on the pull-out couch for three nights, being woken periodically by frantic families sobbing at some tragic news coming from the ICU. A few times each night, I would wake up, and go upstairs to Dad's room to check on him. I wanted to make sure he was still breathing. I wanted to make sure the lines on his heart monitor were still making even mountains and valleys.

I remember when we were small dad would come into our rooms and put his hands on our backs to make sure we were still breathing. Now the tables were turned.

As we waited, it occurred to me that Advent is all about waiting, too. Waiting for the birth of Christ. For Christ to break into our crazy, chaotic, often mundane or painful lives, to help us catch glimpses of the kingdom.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to balance the pain and suffering, with the good and the joy. How do the two co-exist? For a long time, I used to think it was all or nothing -- either things were really bad and therefore proof that God DID NOT LOVE ME. My mother dies suddenly -- I FEEL CHEATED. My father is in the ICU on Christmas Day -- WHERE IS MY PICTURE-PERFECT CHRISTMAS? Or, things were really good, and I felt loved. A publisher is interested in my writing -- GOD IS SO GOOD! Or we passed the financial portion of our adoption homestudy -- PROOF THAT GOD LOVES ME.

Good or Bad. Suffering or Joy. Nothing in between.

But lately I've been trying to reconcile the two. Figuring out how they co-exist in my life. Not letting the bad things totally overshadow the good. Or the good let me whitewash the bad. Realizing that often they are two sides of the same coin -- suffering offers a new perspective. Pain allows for unexpected growth. Death brings new life.

I spent hours in that waiting room -- waiting for news, waiting for doctors, waiting for my dad to turn a corner, waiting for sisters to come to relieve my night-watch, and as I sat by my dad's bedside, watching the monitors, worrying at his labored breathing, or his low blood oxygen level, I realized that it wasn't overwhelming me. Unlike when my mother died 10 years ago, when my whole world turned upside down, I had an inner calm that whispered, "God is still good." "Something holy is happening here. Open your eyes, you will see it."

Even though I was scared shitless that my father could die, I had peace.

And then I realized that maybe I had experienced a profound kind of Advent after all. Not the picture-perfect family around the fireplace kind of Christmas. But an Advent filled with excruciating waiting. And then a deep realization that Christ had already arrived in the midst of the chaos.

I wanna be like Mattie Ross

To tell you the truth, before this past year I never understood what was so great about movies made by the Coen brothers. Fargo? Too violent. The Big Lebowski? Meh. Burn After Reading? Silly. I haven't even seen No Country for Old Men. (Although now I'd like to see it. And I may give the Big Lebowski another try, since I'm in love with Jeff Bridges.)

But then I saw A Serious Man. Maybe it was the subject matter. Maybe the timing was right, since I heard the movie was based on the book of Job, and I feel like my life has been somewhat Job-like in the past few years, with a series of unfortunate events.

If you haven't seen the movie, it’s about a character named Larry Grobnick. Larry is down on his luck. His life is crumbling around him. His wife is divorcing him, his teaching career is threatened by a disgruntled student, and his children are spoiled and whiny. But he’s been a serious man. He’s done everything right. So why are these things happening to him?

He asks his rabbis – but they have no answers.

Many people I know, including myself, feel like Larry. We do everything right. But we end up feeling like Hashem (a Jewish word for God), doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain. Hashem doesn’t reward us for our hard work.

Larry’s brother, Arthur, is also questioning God. He has a boil on his neck that he spends hours in the bathroom trying to drain. He’s not married, is unemployed, and apparently, is homeless, because he’s sleeping on his brother, Larry’s, sofa. He’s socially awkward, and in trouble with the law.

He complains to his brother about Hashem. “Hashem hasn’t given me s**t!” he sobs to Arthur one night, when he’s at his wits end. Larry tries to comfort him by saying, “You know, sometimes we have to help ourselves,” but his comfort and advice seems empty because Larry feels abandoned by God, too. All they can do in the end is embrace one another and sob.

Larry and Arthur are looking for answers. They’ve grown up in a religious environment where they expected things to be black and white. But when the uncertainty and unfairness of life creep in, their spiritual world-view begins to fall apart.

I love the fact that the movie offers no easy answers. In the end, none of Larry’s rabbi’s can give him comfort. The movie ends with even more questions.

In contrast, Mattie Ross, the main character in True Grit, has a faith that never waivers. Her father is murdered. And she knows no one will seek justice for the murder unless she does it herself. In her voice-over in the beginning of the movie, she says, “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.”

In Stanley Fish's Opinion article about True Grit in the New York Times, he writes:

"These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.

"A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: “You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it.” In short, there is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it)."

In the movie, Mattie plows forward, seeking justice and her belief in God and grace. The only problem is that grace, once again, isn’t bestowed by heroics or “being good.” Bad things happened to Mattie along the way. And at the same time, “Lucky” Ned Peppers and her father’s murderer, Tom Chaney, keep getting away, experiencing lucky breaks. It brings to mind the psalmist’s lament, “Why do the wicked prosper?”

Mattie falls into a snake pit. She almost dies. It seems like all of the grace is being bestowed upon the bad guys. Grace seems random. Or, as Mattie says at the beginning of the film, “free.”

Yet Mattie’s faith never waivers. In the background, throughout the movie, we hear the melody of the old hymn, “Leaning on the everlasting arms.”

I used to look down my nose at people like Mattie. So sure. So black and white. Never questioning. I thought they were small-minded and naive. I tend to be more like Arthur and Larry. Always questioning. Thoughtful. But the result, at times, is that my faith is tossed around by each wave of circumstances and unfortunate event: Wondering where God is when I’m going through something difficult. Wondering why seemingly less deserving people prosper, while I struggle to keep my head above water. I bought into the idea that I had to do everything right to receive God's grace. I want everything to make sense.

I’m a Larry. But I want to be a Mattie. After spending years questioning, and living in the gray, I think there’s something to be said about simple, unwaivering, unquestioning faith. A faith that believes God is good and will have the last say, no matter what horrible thing is going on in my life at the moment. A faith that is so strong that even as I’m sitting in the ICU waiting room on Christmas Day, wondering if my father is going to die, I still believe God is good.

I admire Larry and Arthur. There is a time for questioning. A time for wondering about God’s goodness and what it all means.

But as I start a new year, I’m going to strive to be like Mattie Ross. That spunky, so-sure-of-herself 14-year-old girl, with the type of faith I admire, and who inspires me to start “Leaning on the everlasting arms.”

Keeping watch

I creep into the
Hospital room
Wires dangling
From his bruised arms
Machines beeping,
Numbers on the screen
Tell where he resides –
This world?
The next?
Life.
Fragile at beginning and end
We watch
And wait
Monitors blinking
Lines making steep mountains and valleys
In the delicate balance
Between the now and not yet
Tonight,
They reassure me
Blood still courses through his heart…
This heart
So filled
With love
It bursts