There is an angel smiling at me from the tree, her arms outstretched in joyful surrender. She is one of many ornaments that have shown up on my doorstep over the past few weeks, part of the outpouring of love I have received as I enter into this unique Advent season. As I await my first childless Christmas since becoming a mother. I look at the smiling angel and choke back a sob. I think of my favorite line from Love Actually, "At Christmas, you tell the truth."
So here is my truth this Christmas: I am unraveling.
I have spent the weekend in full-on-celebration mode, cramming every tradition and holiday event I could muster into my last weekend with the children before saying goodbye to them for two whole weeks. We all piled into my bed on Friday night, arranged like straws in a game of pick-up sticks - which is to say, not arranged at all - all pillows and arms and legs and blankets and love. We snuggled in front of Christmas shows with all three children piled onto my lap like puppies in pajamas. We got takeout so I could snuggle instead of stand at the stove top. We sang and danced and went to concerts and gathered with friends and went to church and saw Santa's Village. We ate donuts and reindeer-shaped sugar cookies and endured the pure exhaustion of a three-year-old twice deprived of a nap. It was all of the things. It was magical and musical and tiring and tedious and wild and wonderful.
As I served my children one final snack before bed, my daughter crawled into my lap and said, "I don't really want gifts for Christmas. The best gift of all is just being together. For Christmas, I just want to be with you." And that's when I felt it again - the unraveling. I sat choking back tears, knowing that neither Santa nor baby Jesus can grant her that wish this year. Knowing that she and I want the same thing for Christmas. Knowing that it's all going to be okay, but it's also going to hurt like hell.
I want you to know that I am okay with the unraveling.
It seems that God does God's best work with people that have come unraveled. I think unraveled people make the best raw material. And here's the thing. In the midst of the unraveling, there you are. Here you come, your best thread in hand, stitching me back together again. Here you come with your cards and your Christmas gifts, your generosity and your joy, your treasures and your time. I can feel you stitching me back together, re-knitting the very fabric of my life. And I find that I am better for having unraveled. I am stronger, I am more beautiful, I am more real - and it's because I am fully me, and mixed in with the me is the fully you. We are meant to live in community, lending each other thread, stitching one another back together, mending the tears and wiping the tears and spending the time and showing up over and over again until we all look like the best-loved patchwork quilts.
Thank you to those of you who have witnessed my unraveling, you who have come to my rescue in the most thoughtful and precious of ways. I am so honored to have your lives woven in with mine. Just thinking of you, I can smile back at the angel on the tree, can take a deep breath in and lift my own arms in joyful surrender.
