Empty Arms

Another Christmas card is in the can, so to speak.  Whew, we did it.



emphasis on the "bright" in 2010

Every year, I put an overabundance of effort and importance on a cute, original card.  My thinking is that with this quantity of munchkins, I am surely missing lots of good photo ops, and the card shoot ensures that a single good picture will exist of each child at least once a year.   So I rush around and try to piece together outfits for a blend of boys, girls, and grownups that might help us appear more coordinated and make us look, you know, like we have our act together.  (We don’t.)  I visualize the color scheme and the options available across the age groups, run in and out of stores, order stuff online, have my gray covered up, and make sure haircuts happen at least one week in advance of the big day.

In other words, the level of effort verges on the ridiculous.  I freely admit it.



We had two photo shoots this year 'cause the first one
 made me us look strangely tired.  Imagine that!

The funny thing is that when the proofs come in and I am looking at all the healthy, shining faces, there is one part of me that aches a little bit, and leads me to think about something both piercing and bittersweet.

I think about empty arms.

I know this post is anti-festive and hostile to the modern cheerful-at-all-costs Christmas spirit, but can I be honest?  I ache for the children lost to us—the pregnancies that ended in heartache.  I look at our Christmas card photos this year and how they communicate such perfection and happiness and lovely children and sweet smiles, as such cards really should.  But I am a mother and know that certain hearts are not there and it grieves my own.

So I try to reconcile the holiday joy, which I really do feel, with the nagging heartache and am surprised that it’s really not that difficult.  Because at Christmas, Mary moved into motherhood with the birth of Jesus, a path that began with an adorable babe and mommy snuggles and all the sweet baby sounds.  But follow her story thirty-three years, and it ends painfully, with a mother who no longer had a son to hug, to admire, to follow.  That story ends with empty arms for Mary, too.  We are aligned, if even in a small way, by our suffering.  And this thought makes me not feel so alone.




Can I confess?  2012 involved a tiny bit of photoshopping.
But it turned out so great that I might never outdo it.  Still gonna try, mind you.

I tell myself: there is tragedy and triumph in the Christmas moment…the hope of a new birth to a new mother and, later, the deep grief as she watches her son brutally die right before her eyes.  But then—then—the most glorious rebirth takes place at the resurrection, and the hurt of mother and son serves the sacred purpose so many years later of allowing me access to eternity.

I feel empty arms today but his arms were also empty when they were spread wide on the cross — so I could walk right into them.

And I consider that without the suffering of her mama heart, so intricately bound up in the pain of the cross, Mary's greatest purpose could not have been fulfilled.  To be a mom.  To be Jesus's mom. The suffering was a necessary and non-negotiable part of that purpose. 

Christmas 2009

So as we turn the calendar to December, my heart is quickened to pray for those who open up card after card of happy Christmas scenes depicting perfect-looking families and for the empty arms they bring to mind.  For those ex-wives who have no husband to hold; for those who have seen precious ones die of long sicknesses or quick accidents.  For those who never had a chance to bear the child they always desired.  For those teetering on the edge of loss as people they care passionately about are eaten up with illness, weak health, or addiction. 

For those who in the camera’s flash appear to have their lives together, but behind the shiny smiles, they grieve.

And I resolve to gratefully lean into the small suffering in my own life and accept it as part of God’s greater plan--a plan to develop depth and empathy and nuance in my character and make me the wife, mother, friend, daughter, and sister that He wants me to be.  That, to quote Tim Keller, “there will be a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God."




preview of 2013