My Little Tree, the Antique Fireplace, an Exposed Brick Wall, and a Single Strand of Christmas Lights

Christmas Lights

I love Christmas lights.  I walk around New York pausing every few blocks to say, "ooooohhhh, look at those lights."  I sit on my couch in my living room admiring the single strand of white lights that perfectly wraps around my little tree and then stretches across my antique whitewashed mantle.  As I write this, reclined on my bed in the dark, I am looking out my window at rows and columns of window air conditioning units wishing it would snow just a little thicker instead of looking like the last minute of a cotton candy machine--vague wisps of goodness meandering through the air.

Maybe it's good the snow probably won't stick; I left my boots at work in favor of wearing my heels home.  The memory of 50 degree weather this morning stuck out more clearly than the reality of wind, precipitation, and bitter cold that had transformed the day to night.  Still, I miss those nights I spent sitting on my couch in Utah as an undergraduate.  My couch nestled the window, and the window was adorned with a valence I had made in a post-break-up effort to feel self-worth and block out pain.  On top of the valence hung a strand of white Christmas lights.  I would sit there at midnight, journal and pen in hand, and allow myself to be mesmerized by the lamp post illuminating happy flakes on their way to pad the concrete.

The concrete will not be padded tomorrow morning.  Though I am hoping for dust bunnies, it looks like tonight will only bring dust.  And the whistling of my radiator.

And the Light Came Again

Readers: This is an essay I wrote while some months ago, and I just decided to reread it.  I think it is worthy of posting now.  Enjoy.

A few months ago I was walking between buildings on campus to get things from my locker before going home.  The clouds threatened, and the air loomed with moisture.  Only two blocks to the metro—I thought I could beat the storm.  By the time I was finished at my locker, the rain had started to fall.  I attempted to use my umbrella, but after half a block, my umbrella had been hopelessly, irreparably warped by the wind.  Soon my jeans were heavy, my glasses splattered, my mascara blinding, my flip flops—a slick liability.  I think I moved my arms in a breaststroke motion, trying to combat the wind as if it were a rip tide.  I prayed in vocal sobs that I would make it to the metro safely, and eventually, I did.  Some companion riders suggested, “I think your backpack is leaking.”  “Did you see the rest of me?  I’m drenched head to toe.” 

Earlier this week, clouds of discouragement, burden, frustration, and emotion threatened a similar storm.  And then it happened.  The storm broke, the rain came, and the same vocal sobs uttered a prayer, not for my physical safety this time, but for every other kind of safety—spiritual, mental, emotional.  One of my friends recently said, “Behind the bright smiles and warm handshakes, there is often deep pain.”  While I do not doubt the sincerity of many bright smiles and warm handshakes, I am equally confident that any person who has experienced growth in this life has done so at great cost, at the hand of many storms, and with the strength of many prayers.

Around the beginning of my second year of law school, I began to think significantly about what is required to attain perfection—what is required to be like Christ.  I had completed a personal inventory and found that I liked and was generally nice to my roommates; did not steal, lie, or commit other affirmative sinful acts; and tried to be an all-around good person most days.  I could not pinpoint anything specific to repent of but realized I was far far far from perfect.  And I concluded that perfection requires a refined character.  Not necessarily in the sense of appreciating fine culture, but in embodying every good thing: honesty, kindness, patience, humility, faith, hope, charity, and all forms of virtue.  These were not traits I could concretely and measurably practice in my daily life.  They were not attributes for which I could define a goal, pick a project, and discretely work on.  Rather, they were, and are, character traits which require a lifetime or more to develop.

In the year that followed this realization, and this desire to somehow be better, I was presented with ample storms to change me.  After a week of particularly difficult events, including the death of my grandfather, I read A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis.  His characterization of God’s influence in our lives struck me: “[So God is, then, something like a divine physician.] A cruel man might be bribed—might grow tired of his vile sport—might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have [temporary] fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a [wonderfully skilled] surgeon whose intentions are [solely and absolutely] good.  [Then,] the kinder and more conscientious he is, [the more he cares about you,] the more inexorably he will go on cutting [in spite of the suffering it may cause.  And] if he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless…”  (C.S. Lewis, as quoted by Jeffrey R. Holland in “The Bitter Cup and the Bloody Baptism”)

At times, I felt that I was undergoing the exact same surgery over and over and over again.  With each ordeal, I turned to the Lord, knowing I could not face the circumstances alone.  It was a choice, a very real and tempting choice between being absorbed by bitterness and shutting myself off versus reaching out to the only Being who could understand.  I often felt alone, and I often was alone, but not entirely.  Christ was alone, so I would never have to be.  Each time I prayed, there was relief.  He was there.  Each time I sought assistance, it was granted.  Never in the form of a vanishing problem, but rather in the form of strength to take one more step or to try one more alternative or to make it through one more day.  Often I found myself praying again within the hour because for whatever reason, my faith had faltered, but again the comfort came, and it was enough to get me through.

This week, as the sobs subsided, the storm parted, and the light came again.  Peace washed over me.  My muddled thoughts were clear.  My knowledge of the power of Christ’s Atonement became that much more certain and sure.

A friend recently described a mutual friend of ours as seeming to have “a perpetual buoyancy that only comes from a joy in Christ, whether he recognized it or described it in that way.”  Whether we recognize it or describe it as such, the power behind the bright smiles and warm handshakes, the ability to serve in times of turmoil, the hope of something better is a joy in Christ and His Atonement.

Also recommended: “The Inconvenient Messiah” by Jeffrey R. Holland