The Certainty of Christmas
The tree is up. The gifts are wrapped. I bought all the presents I could for my kids from the stalled cargo ships with time to spare. I’m prepared. But I still wonder if my heart is fully ready for the celebration of Jesus this holiday. The truth is, there is a mountain of uncertainty in my mind and in this world. Covid-19 is still floating around, with all the controversy that hovers over it. I don’t like admitting that my craving for certainty hasn’t yet been satisfied. I still wander around sorting through the “what ifs” and sometimes continue to scare myself with my own shadow, what mistakes I’ll make, or how I might fail.
OCD is painful and often makes the holiday season more challenging for people. When I was young, I was petrified to be sick on Christmas Eve. What if I threw up on Christmas Eve? What if I didn’t get to fully enjoy what I spent weeks being excited about? What if I couldn’t participate? What if my Christmas was ruined? What if I got someone else sick? Around and around my penetrating fears would go for days before Christmas. I would obsess over what could happen and tried my best to stay healthy, which meant more compulsions. Since compulsions only further anxiety, by the time Christmas Eve came, I’d usually have some level of real stomachache brought on solely by my torturing anxiety about the possibility of getting a stomachache. Once having kids, I would worry similarly, but I was mostly concerned with the health of my children. I would spray down their backpacks when they got home from school, pick them up early if I knew someone was sick in their class, or obsessively ask them how they were feeling. I was miserable before Christmas and felt overwhelmed by the uncertainty of germs and the expectation to be healthy for our celebrations. I was sucking the fun and joy out of Christmas.
Now that I’m medicated and have strategies it’s easier for me, but I still feel a familiar temptation to ruminate about the anticipation and uncertainties of what could happen during this special time of year. I think the world is still recovering from the uncertainty that Covid-19 brought to the season last year and there is still a lot left we don’t know about this virus that looms over all of us. Can we move through this season with joy, despite our uncertainties?
No, I won’t be getting total certainty in my stocking this Christmas, nor will you, but that’s because we’re all getting something far better. We’ve all been given the gift of Christ, over and over, no matter the amount of uncertainty swirling around us. His birth is done and finished. He is here. We’ve been given the final gift of forever with Christ when we believe in Him. His message won’t mutate like a virus or stop working like medical treatments. We can confidently approach the throne with certainty that this baby boy was born for us, His broken and sinful people. There is no room for uncertainty to stay the night in our hearts because we are His forever. No matter how many questions loiter in our minds or intrusive thoughts try to sabotage our holiday, we can confidently and bravely approach Christ with certainty that He was born to save us, and we are forever His.
Note: My fears tend to circle around germs, but OCD can suck the fun out of any situation with countless other types of obsessions.
