Because of Jesus

Just days before Christmas, I finally pull out my little box of lights and string them across our bookshelf, twinkling stars against wood. It's Friday right before sunset, and I know if I don't bring them out now I might not bring them out at all.....

Christmas...My favorite time of the year.
More than any other time of year, during Christmas season you're allowed to be a child again. To enjoy and share the small things. People are sweeter and more thoughtful, more giving.

Most years, my family is nearly weary of December before it arrives. Months ahead of time I start reminding them it's almost time, almost time to pull out the music and the treasured story books and the lights, the wishes for snow and could they please let me drag into our tiny apartment a tree, even if all I find is a scrawny one?

But this year, when December comes, no Christmas music plays. No lights, no scrawny tree, no laughter in the pure happiness of the season. I notice the difference, but it's hard to get out of survival mode. Something inside me has shut off that little door that held within it that childish joy. Something deep down inside has resigned itself to just making it through this year, and maybe next year I'll have it together enough to invest in the season.

Survival mode continues into ten days before Christmas. Teddy and Susan come to visit from California for a few days. And we're happy and it's so good to have nearly everyone together under one roof, and we laugh and talk and breathe December air together, some with our hearts wide open. Others with certain little doors barred shut. And I realize that it's sometimes people that know us the least, that can sense changes in us the quickest when my brother-in-law verbalizes what no one else had... He states from the start of the week that there's something different about me since he saw us last, and he attempts to figure it out, him not afraid to speak his mind,  but me, I find other things to talk about. And so time flies and all too quickly they too have to fly, but his words, Sara you've changed...You've had to grow up too fast. All the responsibility is getting to you, they stay with me and when Susan calls a few days later and says Teddy's worried for me--she's worried for me, I'm ready to listen.  And what she says is not anything I didn't already know. They noticed the shift in me, slight as it may be...the lessening of the child in me. And she gives me some good advice on setting boundaries and delegating and not trying to carry the world on my shoulders. And she's right and I needed her words.
But that wasn't all. It was just the beginning. I hadn't fully listened to what Jesus had to say yet. To what the root of the problem was...

Yes I've grown up this year. Graduating from college last December and starting a new job and learning to make money stretch far and paying bills and making decisions for the family, yes it's responsibility, but it's real life and I know that's not the problem.
It's my brokenness.
--Or I should say, the problem is not accepting my brokenness.

It's the feeling of complete inadequacy in all those areas of responsibility and more that's been wearing me thin and bolting shut those doors. It's the belief that if I don't carry these burdens, no one will. It's the stressing over life's cares. It's the belief that my brokenness is what's making a mess of everything--This is what's ebbed away at the child-heart inside me, this year more than any other, leaving me raw and ready to close as many doors as possible, all hunkered down and thinking what next... 

....The Friday before Christmas I hang lights and notice that half of one set isn't working, and I'm frustrated, this too, broken? What in my life isn't broken, and these lights, they look pitiful! Our neighbors, their lights actually shine--these just feebly flicker...maybe, I should put them away before my family laughs at them... and as I stand weary, trying to decide what to do while my family sits around a laptop watching a video clip, mom notices and her eyes reflect the twinkling bulbs, happy, the others too, their faces brighten, and something in me shifts...splits... spills...

Seconds later my family says there's a video clip about a cracked pot, you should watch it, and I say no I need to do something else, but right then and there I remember hearing in the past the tale of this pot, and I know God is trying to speak to me. I try to ignore the pull, but He's too strong. I finally slide in next to my family as they're watching another little clip, and I ask if it's possible to watch the one about the little pot, and they get excited that I want to join, and we watch.
And we hardly breathe. This simple story, it speaks healing into each one of us so powerfully. Four brief minutes. But no eyes are dry. Each of us, we are all so moved. An ache so deep down is spoken to, and we each process in our own way...

The video clip, it's animated and cheesy and lame, and downright kinda silly. But it moves us just the same. That man, who so gently cared for those pots, he could have cast that one aside, that worthless piece of dust turned hard. But He didn't. Instead he day after day went up that steep hill, him bearing the weight, the burden. The pot, the cracked one? It was still worthless, broken, a burden, but as long as it leaked, it blessed--He blessed. It had no beauty of its own... those flowers, they couldn't thank the pot, the pot didn't do anything. It was that man. No one could thank anything or anyone but that man, who believed and rescued and treasured that worthless pot, and as I watched that man, I thought of Jesus, and isn't He beautiful? He loves us that much, enough to make use of us, even if we're broken, as long as we leak Him and Him only? And isn't the gospel powerful, that in using us, His name is glorified more than if He just set us on a shelf somewhere, us too broken for Him to use?

 ...I forget so quickly, my eyes blind to Him so easily...


So many people are cracked...aren't we all, in our own way, broken, and leaking, like that little pot?
But we aren't cast aside. We are faithfully held and carried and poured out, to bless others, but ultimately, to bless and bring glory to His name.
All He asks us it to trust His heart, even when we can't see what's just beyond the walls of that wooden cart, and not to attempt to lift and bear those heavy burdens that only He can carry.

And yes I feel silly, knowing I sound like a broken record, but I remember chapter 36 in the Desire of Ages, and after listening to it over and over for the past 3 weeks, how can I not praise His name "...in the assembly of all His people", and share what He has taught me, and continues to teach, even if it seems to be the same lesson, over and over, because maybe I'm not the only slow, slow learner, and maybe the lesson of embracing our brokenness is one we must relearn daily, maybe it's when we know we're broken, that we become as a little child, and willingly leak for Him?

This Christmas, it's my wish that in every crack, in every cut, in every break, we would allow His goodness to spill through us, one drop at a time. Isn't that what Jesus did, when He came and became small? From a King's Son to a mere speck of dust on a throne of hay, so inconsequential to everyone that not one house, not one family, found room to welcome Him? With every step of humiliation here on earth He stained the rocky path with His blood, His sweat, His tears, His living water, and left in His wake beauty untold...

Athough we may be rubbed raw this Christmas season, Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, the Son of God, our sins, we hurt Him raw, so raw He cracked, and mercy spilled, for you, for me.

Merry Christmas.

Because of Jesus.