Return of the King and Other Christmas Reflections

It's been a long while since I've blogged, but I felt the need...so here you go...

I rang in Christmas watching Return of the King (part three of The Lord of the Rings). Far different than how I use to ring in Christmas, but I found it strangely fitting.

You see, Christmas use to be my favorite. I loved the carols and the giving gifts (yeah, getting them too, but I deeply love giving).  I would sneak upstairs after Santa came, plug in the Christmas tree lights, and just sit there, watching them, sometimes singing a carol quietly, for hours.  I use to dream about the Christmas traditions I wanted for when I had a family of my own—stockings and Christmas Eve presents, matching PJs and the nativity story.

But then, life happened, or in some cases, it didn’t happen.  My parents divorced, and suddenly Christmas was torn in two, and it wasn’t whole.  Along the way, it became a struggle.  Then I worked retail, and that all but killed Christmas cheer.  And year after year, I still found myself alone. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have family and I have friends.  But one of the deepest desires of my life has been to be a wife and mother.  I believe that human beings were created to be partnered together, that we are designed, intrinsically, to be matched up.  God said it wasn’t good for man to be alone. If that is true, how much less good is it for woman, created to complete and partner man, to be alone? 

So, year after year, despite the aching and the praying and the searching and the hoping, I am still alone.  And I’ve had to watch as dreams slipped away; I will never be a young mother, I will never get to enjoy several years of marriage before starting a family, I may never get to bear my own children, and I may not even get to raise a child.  I’m on the doorstep of 40.  With each day and month and year, many of my dreams tumble out of reach due to biology and the passage of time. 

It’s true, love may still be out there for me; I still have a fool’s hope.  But that hope does little to ease the current pain, or the pain of the last few decades.  It doesn’t tell me why God has been silent over the years in regards to my pleas and petitions.  That’s a whole other post—

Back to the movie.  While the Lord of the Rings movies all came out in December, they are hardly standard Christmas fare.  Yet, given that I was alone (both romantically and, thanks to circumstance and a little bit of choice, literally without family and friends around), I felt a sojourn through Middle Earth might hit the spot.

And as I was watching through the movies (and of course, I’ve read the books, so despite the movies leaving out quite a bit, my heart can fill in the gaps), I realized this was the story I needed to hear right now.  Because it’s about a land that is kingless, it is about a world on the brink, it is about courage and hope and not giving up. 

We, here on earth, are without our King.  He’s gone away to prepare a place, and he has promised to return.  And I find myself aching beyond belief for that moment.  When Jesus comes back and gathers me to himself.  When Heaven is opened to me and there won’t be any more pain or grief or longing.  We will be perfectly and completely whole. 

And in the meantime, there is Pippin, who is a fool, and yet, an honest fool.  And I feel like that so many days.  And there is Sam, who holds the flame of hope, enough to light the way for himself and Frodo to complete the quest.  I need a Sam, and I need to be Sam.  There is Eowyn, who fears not being the woman she knows she was born to be (and not finding the love she desires…oh yes, that resounds in the deepest chasms of my soul).  I need to hope that here, in my despair, that I may yet still find a soul that would pick me, that would cherish me, and love me, not to mention the whole slaying a mighty foe bit.

And here, at Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of the King, I need to remember that He is coming back.  That I have the promise of Heaven and eternity, where I won’t feel broken and incomplete and forgotten.  I will be with my King, and it will be bliss. 

If that’s not what Christmas is about, then I don’t want it.