Miracle

     Sometimes my job wears me out.  It seems that in the last few weeks I've seen more suffering than I can stand at times.  It's not the decline of a 90-some year old who has lived a full life that gets to me.  Yeah, I wish it was easier to get out of this world than it is, but I figure we had a hard time getting into this world, why not have a hard time getting out?  No, it's the suffering of children in families that shatters my heart.  Children who didn't ask to be here but who get treated no better than a stray dog.  Or the bright, lively, giving person who's only in her 40s who is slowly wasting away to nothing, her precious story cut short when there's so many beautiful chapters yet to be written.  I don't understand.  And pat answers only makes it worse.  I'd rather live with the uncertainty and questions than offer shallow lines of comfort that only inflict more pain. 

     Somehow it's harder during the Christmas season.  I go to malls or grocery stores and see people who think the world revolves around them.  Or I see the stress and anger that arises in otherwise good people.  I can imagine Jesus running around with his hands waving,  "People!  Stop it!  This is not at all what I want!  Put down your bags and credit cards and give each other a hug!  Go home and love your children, tell them they are beautiful!  Make one other life a little easier today.  THAT'S what I want.  Not this chaos.  For God's sake, love each other..." 

     Today, when I thought I couldn't stand one more day of being exposed to suffering while people are cussing each other out at WalMart,  I was called to the bedside of a 90-some year-old woman who was dying.  Her daughter had been there all night.  Everyone said they ought to "get her out of there,"  send her home.  But she wanted to be there for her Mom.  No one was going to pry her out of that chair.  And no one should.  Her daughter had been reading prayers to her mother for hours, prayers of their shared faith.  Outside her door, another resident's T.V. was blaring full-blast with "The Price Is Right,"  with intermittent commercials pressuring viewers to go out and get that next big gift.  There were beeps from someone's chair alarm, moaning from another resident who probably couldn't even hear himself, and an occasional dog or cat loping past.  Some nurses donned Santa hats, and garland lined the hallway. 

     The daughter and I sat and talked.  I thought about Christmas, life and death.  People say no one should die on Christmas.  I don't know why, exactly, but it seems somehow that'd be worse.  It'd kind of taint Christmas Day forever after, I suppose.  I thought about Christmas carols, and how I discovered years ago how much sorrow was mentioned in Christmas hymns.  "And ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing, O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing..."   You don't hear that one on the radio often.   Or "In the Bleak Midwinter."  Kind of a downer.  But if we pay attention, those hymns mention the darkness, the toil, the hardship.  Stuff deeper than being stressed out by holiday dinners or the traffic near the mall.  Life and death, all woven together.  It can be a dark world, yes, but what Christmas tells us is that there is always Light.  It doesn't deny darkness.  But tells us not to get stuck in the Dark.  The Light has come, and keeps coming, and WILL keep coming... 

     I was weary when I went to the nursing home today.  But I watched a daughter sit by her mother's side, having been up all night after being here all day yesterday, I was quieted.  Stilled.  Her mother had been prayed over so many times in the last 24 hours (because we thought we knew when she was leaving!) that I could imagine her waving us away with a "ok, shaddup already!  God heard ya the first time!" 

     Her mother's breathing started to slow down.  It slowed down some more.  Some of the nurses from the facility gathered, looking sad, the rims of their eyelids red.  The daughter began to cry.  We could all feel it coming.  She just started slowing down, understandably tired.  Then finally, nothing.  I think we all held our breath, wondering if there'd be another breath or not.  Seconds ticked by.  Minutes.  The daughter cried.  Other nurses filed in, one by one to hug the daughter.  Nurses who saw this every day.  Who wiped butts, sometimes got hit in the face, yelled at,  dodged complaints from exhausted family members... they still managed to love these "ol' buggers," as my father would call them, and maybe even himself. 

     All was calm, all was bright.  There was a hush.  Somehow you couldn't hear the T.V. across the hall, or the beeps of alarms or the moans of another.  It was quiet, as if we were all cocooned by the Spirit for that moment.  It was... holy.  It wasn't odd that it was 2 days before Christmas.  This is what Christmas is about;  the Light coming into the darkness and the darkness vanishing into a mist that becomes a comforting, holy Spirit to remind us,  It's ok.  It hurts to love because it hurts to lose.  But it's love that keeps us alive, that keeps us hoping and trying and working one more hour when another dementia patient slaps us, because we've seen that glimpse in their eye, that light.  And we know that there's someone in there, a child of God, who lived a whole life before this, and who still wants love just like us. 

     It's moments like that that remind me that Jesus' birth is not a denial of Real Life.  Jesus was born into a world full of pain, and his Spirit still lives on in this world, shedding light in dark places, giving us the courage and the hope to carry on and bring Light ourselves into dark places. 

     This Christmas Eve I want to be with my family, in quiet, build a fire to light up the darkness.  I want to share stories of where we've seen the Light in our own lives or in the lives of others this year, despite the nagging darkness.  I want us to remember why we press on and keep lighting those candles.  I want us to remember why we can't do anything else but to love, and to keep loving, despite getting our hearts broken again and again. 

    I want to spend time sitting in the Light....  with the people I love the most in this crazy, broken world.  You may say I'm a dreamer, but thankyouJesus, I'm not the only one...