“and the soul felt its worth”

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
’Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth

O Holy Night is always a favorite, especially with the right person singing it (Josh Groban or Celine Dion preferably). I never truly caught these lyrics until just the other day:

’Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth

The holidays for most people are a joyous time of celebrating and sharing memories with family and friends.  However, for many people who is simply not the case.  The holidays are a painful time that can magnify the hurt they manage to keep under wraps during the rest of the year.

Last year, Chad spent his third Christmas away from our family.  (Technically four though…because one year he deployed the day after Christmas.  Seriously, who schedules that?  Christmas barely counts if you deploy the next day.)  I went home to be with our families for the holidays.  While I participated in all the scheduled events and enjoyed the celebrations, just under the surface was a hole in my soul.  My husband was on the other side of the world fighting a war.  He missed our son’s first Christmas.  For Addison it was the fourth Christmas in nine years that deployments had taken her dad away.  Nothing feels normal or right when you are surrounded by family and friends on the most joyous day of the year and there is a huge hole in your heart.

And I held it together…most of the time…except that one time.

Decorating my parents’ Christmas tree is always a thing.  When we lived close enough, our family, my brother’s family and my parents always decorated it together, just like we did when we were little.  Ann Murray’s Christmas tape (no joke) playing in the background, my mom handing out ornaments, and my dad moving all the ornaments to the top of the tree from the bottom where the kids have piled them together.

Last year, somehow, I missed it.  In the hustle and bustle of the evening, I needed to feed Jake and put him to bed and the kids got excited and it just happened.  I walked downstairs, ready to decorate the tree and it was done.  See, it would be the only tree I would decorate that year because we didn’t put up a tree at our house since we were in Georgia for seven weeks.

In the grand scheme of life, it doesn’t matter, right?  But goodness in that moment I felt alone and forgotten (every emotion is amplified during a deployment and 24 rounds of mastitis!).

Later my dad found me and asked something like, “You ok?” and the wall of emotional fortitude crumbled.  He held me and just let me cry.  He didn’t know what it was like to have a husband gone at Christmas, but he was my dad.  He knew me and he saw me and that made all the difference.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
’Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth

The Christmas story is matchless in that the Creator knows His creation so well.  God saw our need and went to the greatest lengths to rescue us. “For God so loved the world” feels so familiar that we often forget its meaning.  “For God so love the world makes all the difference.

When we are truly known, we can be truly loved.  My dad’s love and care that night comforted me so deeply because he saw me in my mess of emotions and loved me through it.  I didn’t keep it all together.  I wasn’t “strong” as army wives are often labeled.

But what is so amazing is how much more my heavenly Father loves me, far beyond what my pretty amazing earthly dad ever could.

To be fully known by God – all my mess and brokenness and junk – and yet fully loved is a life-giving treasure.  Our souls can feel worth, not because of anything we can do or muster, but because God places such incredible value on us.  He sent His Son to be wrapped in human flesh to physically show us our worth.  As Ann Voskamp would say, His “unmatchless, unstoppable, unrelenting, unconditional love.”

Don’t miss it this Christmas.  Don’t miss His love. Don’t just sing the songs and give the gifts and hustle your way through the holidays.  Relish His love for you.  Share it with others.  Share it with someone who may have a hole in their soul this holiday season.