Bo Stern - When Holidays Hurt: Finding Hidden Hope Amid Pain and Loss

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When Holidays Hurt

2014 Bo Stern

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Published in association with literary agent Jason Myhre of D.C. Jacobson & Associates LLC, an author management company, www.dcjacobson.com.

Italics in Scripture indicate the authors emphasis.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from HOLMAN CHRISTIAN STANDARD BIBLE. 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Broadman and Holman Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE: OLD TESTAMENT. 1962, 1964 by Zondervan (used by permission); and from THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE: NEW TESTAMENT. 1958 by the Lockman Foundation (used by permission).

Scripture quotations marked MSG are from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Scriptures marked NASB are from NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE. The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission.

Scriptures marked NET are from NET Bible copyright 19962006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-0-7180-1620-3

ISBN: 978-0-7180-3954-7 (eBook)

14 15 16 17 18 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my ALS Wives Support Group: women who love fiercely, live sacrificially, and never stop believing for a world without wheelchairs, feeding tubes, and breathing machines. I love you.

Contents

Introduction

14 He Satisfies

26 He Celebrates at Weddings

35 The Dance of Grief and Gratitude

D eep thanks to the amazing crew at Thomas Nelson for being willing to take a chance on a new authors proposal for a book about the dark side of the holidays. You are brave souls and valiant visionaries, and I am honored to work with you.

To Jen Gott for editing my words into medicine for hurting hearts and for inserting copious amounts of humor into every e-mail, knowing how much we both need to laugh. You are dearly loved.

To my agent, Jason Myhre, for the countless agenty things you do that I would never, ever want to do. Ever. Thank you.

To my family, who has weathered every holiday, hard day, happy day, clinic day, in-over-our-heads day, and miraculous day with me. You make my life make sense. A million thank-yous.

To Jesus. Author and finisher, keeper and sustainer, helper and healerall my hope is in You.

I really loved my first forty-five Christmases. They certainly werent perfect, but they also werent painful. In fact, I would say that based on the purely imaginary Standard Holiday Happiness scale, although I had known highs and lows, my cumulative Christmas experience stood at a good, solid 8. I really liked holidays, and I loved making them happy for my husband and kids. It was a job I felt born to do.

Then came February 2011.

Just after celebrating our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary and on the day of our daughters sixteenth birthday, my wonderful husband, Steve, was diagnosed with ALS (more commonly known as Lou Gehrigs disease). ALS is a disease so fierce and foul that I feared all my holidaysbefore and afterwould be redefined by it. I imagined looking at the family picture taken when we celebrated Christmas at SeaWorld and mentally recaptioning it: one year before our world fell apart.

In the months after the gut punch of the initial diagnosis, I caught my breath a little. We began to get our heads around what we were facing and how we would fight it. Slowly, as spring moved into summer, we developed a new sort of normaltentative and tender but still more secure than we had felt in the brittle winter of Steves diagnosis.

Autumn snuck up on me with a beauty that took me by viii surprise. I remember the day I gave myself permission to love it. Long drives with Steve followed as we searched for the most beautiful trees in Central Oregon and just enjoyed spending the season together with few words and much wonder. I loved fall. And I felt ready for Christmas. I really did. But as soon as the Thanksgiving leftovers were put away and the annual after-dinner Christmas movie was playing in the family room, I knew I was in trouble. Spring had been hardappropriately hard because it was cold and the news was fresh. Summer had brought welcome warmth. Fall was lovely and peaceful. But Christmas is supposed to be happy. I wanted to be happymore than anything. I wanted it for my kids and my husband and my friends, but dont let me kid you: I wanted it for me. I longed to fall in love with Christmas, but my broken heart had a mind of its own, and it didnt seem to understand the rules of the calendar.

Not knowing what else to do, I sat down with my Bible and outlined my options for facing my most difficult-to-date Christmas: (1) ignore it, (2) fake it, or (3) rescue it.

Option number 1 was tempting, and I probably would have chosen it if I didnt have a family depending on me for hope. Option 2 was also temptingbut impossible. I didnt have the emotional energy for it. I wasnt sure what option 3 would look like, but I wanted it. I wanted to find a way to make Christmas come alive in my broken heart and sad home. I felt desperate for Christmas to be rescued, and even though it seemed like a long shot, I decided to give it a try. I determined that instead of running from Christmas, I would instead invite Jesus into it. I would intentionally let His comfort come to my chaos by leaning into the swirling storm of sorrow and joy rather than away from it. And as I experienced His goodness in those tender days of Christmas, I realized I could have that goodness in all the days I would ever face as we traveled the road of suffering. In the end, the holidays of that first year post-diagnosis turned out to be some of our most beautiful.

Are you drowning in disappointment and heartache? Seasons of sorrow can easily suppress the beauty of the changing seasons and their accompanying celebrations. Holidays serve as milepost markers in our lives. We remember who we were with and what we ate and how happy everything seemed in comparison to the raw reality of right now. The problem with these built-in milestones, though, is that theyre impossible to dodge. They show up every year like clockwork, woven into the rhythm of our Hallmark-card culture. We cant avoid them! But we dont have to face them alone. The real beauty of the incarnation is that Christ came. He came for every hard or happy day we will ever facefrom weddings to winter solsticeand He promises to be near us on every single one.

Will you join me in this unlikely dance of suffering and celebration? Lets stand together for a momentnot around a perfectly Pinteresty holiday but at the foot of the crossand look again at the Savior who was willing to step into our sorrow. There He is. For you. For us. For our sin and sadness and our breakdowns in the middle of department stores on Black Friday (oh wait, is that just me?). He