My Worst and Best Christmas

My Worst and Best Christmas

Twenty-one years ago today, I experienced the worst Christmas of my life.  Paradoxically, it was also the best Christmas of my life.  It’s a story that only a handful of people have heard.

It began innocently enough with a Christmas Eve service.  The pastor, sitting in a rocking chair wearing the necessary ugly Christmas sweater, surrounded by a hundred kids decked out in their Christmas best.  He read Luke’s version of the Christmas story.  Afterwards, we sang many of the best-known carols.  As we began to sing, something strange happened in my heart that washed a flood of tears from my eyes.  The lyrics wouldn’t come.  “Silent…” “….to the world.”   I tried to sing, but my emotions silenced my voice.  The strongest were piercing doubt and raging anger.  The service was syrupy sweet, but I was in a ferocious battle.  “Do I really believe these words? They feel a million miles away right now.  I don’t want to believe them!  Where are you, God?!”

Here’s the backstory to my struggle:  My wife was in the hospital that night…one of many similar nights over the previous two years.  My two young boys were missing their mother.  Her battle with mental illness had taken a toll on me.  Perhaps two dozen hospital stays that eventually produced a diagnosis of  Bipolar Disorder.  I missed her.  I needed her.  And that night where I experienced perhaps the greatest crisis of faith in my life, I missed God even more.  I could have screamed the line from a Longfellow poem, “There is no peace on earth!” with these words added, “or in my heart.”  The God I talked about every Sunday felt infinitely distant as I tried to sing those carols.  My tears streamed down.  The service could not end fast enough.  When it finally did, I tried to hide my tear-stained, deeply doubting face and put on the best preacher mask that I could.  No one seemed to notice that I was having my worst Christmas ever, leaning over the frightening precipice of doubt.

Unfortunately, it was one Christmas Eve service down, one to go.  Other family members attended another church on the other side of town.  The second service was more liturgical and less syrupy.  I don’t remember crying, at least not as much.  Some time during that second service, a Bible verse popped into my mind, one that had nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas.  Words that came from the lips of a discouraged, grown-up Jesus.

Let me set the scene:  Jesus has fed the 5,000 and the people want to forcibly declare him king right then and there.  He leaves before they can complete the coronation.  The next day he teaches them that he is the bread of life and tells them that to have eternal life they must eat his flesh and drink his blood.  Yes, we know what he meant.  They had no clue.  Many of his followers tell Jesus essentially, “That’s a tough one!” 

“From that moment many of His disciples turned back and no longer accompanied Him.  Therefore Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘You don’t want to go away too, do you?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, who will we go to?  You have the words of eternal life.’”  (John 6:66-68, HCSB)

The best known apostle, Simon Peter, so often plagued by foot-in-mouth disease, spoke words that have resonated in my heart from that night forward.  “Who will we go to?”  Yes, there are many other religions, philosophies and worldviews.  If someone can’t find one he likes, he’ll just invent a new one, or mix a few together in a syncretistic hodge-podge.  For Peter, however, it was a rhetorical question.  “Yes, there are plenty of others to whom we could go…but…”  Then Peter, a rock of faith at this moment, shares his answer, “You have the words of eternal life.” 

No angels sang.  No lights flashed.  No epiphany was granted.  The words of a deeply-flawed follower of Jesus like myself simply became my words, “To whom would I go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  “Jesus, I am struggling mightily, but I choose to believe in You.  If I am wrong, so be it.”  It didn’t matter how I felt or what I faced, “you have the words of eternal life.”  And that became my best Christmas ever. 

The service ended.  I didn’t feel a whole lot better.  My wife was still in the hospital.  Her battle was far from over.  In truth, so was mine.  There would be (and still are) more unanswered questions, wrestling matches with God, and crises of faith.  In a sense, I’m still a skeptical believer, but after that night the question of identity (“believer”) and modifier (“skeptical”) was answered once and for all.  Looking back some 21 years, I’m deeply grateful for my worst and best Christmas.

If you know me personally, well, this might be a bit of a surprise.  If you don’t, I hope this gives you a little deeper insight into this skepticalbeliever blog.  I hope you’ll join me for this journey and share it with others who might be interested.  I plan to blog weekly and right now the ideas are coming fast and furious.  I’ve got to write them all down before they disappear into the black hole of my brain!  I pray that in some way you have your best and worst Christmas ever this year.