How to Make Space for Sadness In Your Holidays & Find Real Peace In Your Life

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Sure, you can go straight ahead & light that Advent wreath right up — the Hope candle, the Peace candle, and be looking to light that Love candle by the end of the week — but it turns out, that it can actually end up being mighty hard some days to honestly scrounge up much durable hope, peace, love when all kinds of good and holy and lovely things limping, bruised and wrecked.

An all this second week of Advent, with that Peace candle bravely flickering — that’s what I keep thinking:

“The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — all the bits of our broken hearts — is actually what keeps burying our peace.“

The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — all the bits of our broken hearts — is actually what keeps burying our peace.

If we keep hiding pieces of ourselves — the sadness, the disappointments, the regrets — we never find any real peace.

And if we keep trying to keep up this exhausting running pace, running to keep ahead of all the feelings, running to keep up to the pace and polished lives of everyone else — we never find real peace in our own lives.

I have it there on my windowsill in our farmhouse kitchen every December — the little wooden Scrabble letters that can feel like the hustling beat of the soundtrack of our lives, of the whole year, of the holiday season: PACE.

But if I move the letters, if I give them each some time and space, I can see it: If you make time and space in the PACE of everything for Emmanuel — you can finally feel real PEACE.

Someone last week had told me, that for them, that this Advent has felt more like a Lent — a grieving.

And as I had hauled home through the airport this week, I could see all the people hauling their luggage past the blinking Christmas trees and garlands of twinkling lights. And I had felt it, the overweight baggage of tender lives of us all that just kinda ached at the seams.

And Christmas music was playing somewhere, singing something about how it’s the most wonderful time of the year, singing it all through the empty shops and the long halls of the airport terminals, kinda like the chorus forgets that we’re all actually terminal, forgets that we’re all grieving all kinds of tender stories, forgets that we’ve got people we love fighting to keep their heads above water, fighting through brutally hard stories, fighting to just keep hanging on and hanging on to each other.

“Peace isn’t a place to race to — Peace is a Person to make space for. In the pace of everything — make space for Emmanuel and you find peace. “

And while the Christmas tunes keep crooning on, sometimes all out of tune to the quiet howl of our pain, I have that one refrain running gently through the twists and turns of my ole brain:

Peace isn’t a place to race to — Peace is a Person for make space for. In the pace of everything — make space for Emmanuel and you find peace.

How in the world does a weary world rejoice?

And in my interior world — I make space for Emmanuel — and this is the peace that comes:

We may not know why God doesn’t stop all the different kinds of suffering — but we definitely know it’s not because He’s indifferent.

God is so moved by our being entangled in suffering — that He moved Himself into our world and entangled Himself in the suffering with us. God with us.

God knows suffering.
He chose to be born in the middle of a genocide.

God knows suffering. He chose to be born as a minority, a refugee.
God knows suffering. He chose to come from a place where people said no good thing could come from.

God knows suffering. He chose to be poor. He chose to absorb pain. He chose to be powerless.

God penetrates the ache of our world through the willing yes of a poor, unwed teen. In both the Incarnation and the Resurrection, God reveals Himself first to the despairing and dismissed and disregarded and deeply disappointed.

God chose the first witnesses to both His nativity, & to His nailed hands, to be the very people who suffered because they were regarded as suspect, small, sketchy — all of us who are sorrowing.

Christmas is the end of thinking anyone’s life or road is better than anyone else, because Christmas says that everyone needed Christ to come down from heaven and carry every single one of us, every single step of the way back to heaven. Christmas says that we all need rescuing, we all need a Savior.

“God is so moved by our being entangled in suffering — that He moved Himself into our world and entangled Himself in the suffering with us. Emmanuel. God with us.”

Because the point is: Christmas is the beginning of the end of all suffering.

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God“– is what all the choirs say as they sing Handel’s Messiah, is what the prophet Isaiah wrote to comfort all of us looking for real peace.

This year, this road’s, been weary, but we can rest beside the road, beside the boarding gate, beside each other, make space for Emmanuel, and listen to how the angels sing, and feel the comfort Christ alone brings.

And we can feel it: Glory to God in the Highest! Isn’t this is what His glory does? Like a river, His glory in the highest runs down to meet us who are at our lowest, those aching with losses, those left out, those who’ve lost a bit of our vision for redemptive story.

His glory in the highest always runs down to meet us who are at our lowest.

This is what lets us sing like the angels did.

His glory in the highest always runs down to meet us who are at our lowest.

And that refrain keeps meeting me, lifting me: Make space in the PACE for Emmanuel — and find PEACE.

So what if…

What if Christmas was about seeking peace and seeing Christ in that family member that sees everything differently, seeking peace and seeing Christ in that neighbour you’re tempted to be offended by, in those politics you’re offended by, in the people you’re offended by, in the point of view you’re offended by?

What if Christmas demonstrated how to overcome suffering and evil with good, demonstrated how God overcame the world’s suffering and evil forces by willingly laying aside His power and becoming a helpless babe, demonstrating how the strong turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, daily making space to seek peace and to seek Christ — and to quietly lay themselves down so that there might be peace on earth and good will toward men?

What if Christmas was about making space to slow down and draw close enough to listen and hold space for to each other’s pain?

God comes to the suffering and the marginalized — because this is where the Word writes the greatest words.

“God comes to the suffering and the marginalized — because this is where the Word writes the greatest words.“

Let all our ears hear the Advent laments of those who can’t breathe for their sadness.

Let us all listen to one another in the depths of our suffering and sadness — and only speak words that make souls stronger. We know what words can do — because we know what the Word has done.

And maybe? The act of hearing each other destroys all fearing each other… And the discipline of listening is the quickening, and the signalling, of the repositioning of the great commissioning of the Kingdom to Love the marginalized, because this is where the Word always writes the greatest words.

And that refrain keeps coming — make space in the pace for Emmanuel and you’ll find PEACE –– and the relief comes that Christmas is more than a story about sleigh bells jing-jing-jingling — Christmas is the beginning of the story where all kinds of death, in all kinds of ways, finally gets slain.

We know & won’t forget: Christmas is the story that turns around the story of suffering in all our lives.

We know & won’t forget:

Merry Christmas in its original language means all wrongness is happily being made right because of Christ.

“Merry Christmas in its original language means all wrongness is happily being made right because of Christ..“

Bethlehem is the opening of the shock and awe of God to end a long war against all suffering & oppression & wrong & all kinds of heartbreak. The promised seed of the woman, Jesus, will snap that snake, crush the skull of that snake, heal us from the insanity of sin and suffering and destroy that snake.

Infinite God comes as an infant and we won’t forget it: The Dragon slayer of all the dark comes looking like a small beginnings. Emmanuel — God with us.

And He is the One Who comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found — He comes to make His blessings known to you, far as any curse is found near you.

Advent means “expectation” and hope is our expectation, peace is our anticipation, and He is our transformation, and everywhere right now, even amongst us:

In the midst of our lament & our suffering, we get this gift of being the humble and the brave who “prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God… And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

And all of us together, in the midst of the pace of the season, and the heartbreak of our stories, we get to slow down, and breathe deeply and make space for Emmanuel and reach out —

and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

“He comes to make His blessings known to you, far as any curse is found near you.. “

All of us together will make space for Jesus to come into the very centre of our being, and let Him be God amongst us, Emmanuel with us, God remaking us, and all of us will not detach ourselves from the suffering of others, from our own suffering, but we will be the peacemakers, the Kingdom keepers, the wounded healers, because He came to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found — which means Christmas belongs precisely right where any curse or hurt or ache is found.

So we hum those carols loud throughout the empty airport terminals, light those candles around our tables like we’re torching back the night, and we whisper it brave:

Merry Christmas — take that dark night of all our trouble.

Merry Christmas —
Take that hopelessness, take that misery, take that despair.

Because Merry Christmas is an insurrection & a resurrection.

Because Merry Christmas is an insurrection against all the darkness, & a resurrection of all His Light into all our night.

There’s a Hope that holds all of us.

Christmas means the One who can gather up every scattered piece of wrongness has now stepped into the story — & this ole hurting word and all our broken hearts can now know a deeper peace.

And there is a Peace we don’t have to try to get to or arrive at — there is a Peace who is a Person who meets us and His name is Emmanuel.

And we can turn the tunes up louder and sing it too, as shepherds watch their sheep…
“All glory be to God on high,
And to the earth be peace;
Goodwill henceforth from heaven to men
Begin and never cease.”

And there it is in the candle light of that Advent wreath, with it’s waiting manger there at the center, there at the center of this whole spinning planet, waiting for Emmanuel.

Emmanuel is coming, and we hold space for the One holding us all together at our centre, through the sadness and lament and disappointment and darkness, beckoning us to say it and believe what it really means:

Merry Christmas!

The One who can gather up every scattered piece of wrongness has now stepped into the story — and this ole hurting word and all our broken hearts can now know a deeper peace.