Good News of Great Joy

It’s the little things that are the hardest. For example, picking out “Go Dog Go” for my niece, one of my favorites growing up, seemed like an innocuous undertaking. I loved it, she will love it, I will love reading it to her. But that’s when it hit, that wave of grief that I hear people talk about. The one that takes your breath away and makes your knees buckle and brings tears to your eyes like you got punched in the nose. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to read this book to my own children.”

Grief is a process and there are stages that you move forwards and backwards and all sorts of ways through. The physical part of not being pregnant is something that I have processed and grieved and come to terms with. (Before you all think I’m negative Nancy over here, I know we are just at the beginning of potential medical intervention, but these are the kinds of things I have to prepare my heart for.) Most of the time, I can allow myself to say, out loud, to other people, that me being pregnant is a long-shot. It hasn’t and won’t come as easily as 94% of the population (6% of women in the U.S. struggle with infertility, according to the CDC). That is something I’ve come to grips with in the past year and feel like I have a fairly decent handle on most of the time.

The pieces causing my deep pain now are the little things. Things I may never get to do or relate to. The loss of what never will be. Cooing over what facial feature is my sister or her husband in my niece. Debating what personality quirks in the little ones are my friends' and which are their spouse's. Laughing with family trying to distinguish if it's my father-in-law or my brother-in-law or my nephew in the picture. Building a rocket ship with the kids in my Sunday School class. Putting Mary up on our advent calendar. Sometimes those little things, they just punch me in the nose. 

However, what I know in the midst of this occasionally overwhelming grief and waves of sorrow, self-pity and shame is the peace that only Christ can provide. Especially in this season of Advent, when we all so anxiously await the birth of a baby, the angel’s words resound with even more oomph, “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.” What was true for the shepherds 2000 years ago is still Good News of Great Joy today. Peace that Jesus brings now will not end school shootings or solve hunger or halt xenophobia or cure infertility. Miracles happen, absolutely, but in the midst of tragedy and loss and injustice, the peace that comes from that little baby quietly entering a broken world with the purpose of sacrificing himself 33 years later for the very ones that created such pain and anguish, us and them and you and me and "all people", to restore our relationship with the Father is Good News of Great Joy indeed. It's the balm of Gilead. The released breath after submitting your final paper before graduation. The hug from your childhood friend of 20 years. The rhythmic cadence of wave after wave rolling in on the sandy shore. The peace Jesus brings "for all people" draws us to a place where families leave the comfort of the U.S. to walk alongside and advocate for Syrian refugees in Eastern Europe, churches open their doors to people taking advantage of the system and provide food and shelter anyway, my second graders pray for the those who shot and those who were shot in San Bernardino because "they're all people who are hurting" and I can open my hands to release my vice grip on my understanding of what family I should or could or won't or can't have. 

In this space that is so intentionally set aside in the church calendar to await the arrival of the baby who would turn everything upside down, I find rest from these little things. And as nose-punches come in unexpected times and moments, my heart knows the true peace of a reconciled relationship with my Heavenly Father. May you find the peace that passes understanding in your space of anguish in the baby who changed our understanding of peace on earth. And may we proclaim the Good News of Great Joy together as we live lives of peacemakers in preparation for His second arrival.  The arrival that will bring an Isaiah 11 peace and restoration of the brokenness us and them and you and me and "all people" caused. The arrival that stops all nose-punches. Come, Lord Jesus, come.