Dear Beautiful Girl: It’s Nearly Christmas

Dear Beautiful Girl-

You know, you don’t have anybody fooled.  All this running around, the constant need to look as though everything is in order and you’ve got it all under control, the compulsive desire to have perfectly wrapped packages and handknit presents that make everyone oooo and ahhh, the refusal to admit that you need sleep, that damn stubborn inability to ask for help – I’m on to you.  I know that song and dance routine.  We all know it.  We like to slap a “Once upon a time…” and “happily ever after” on either end of it and call it the Christmas story.

But there’s a better story.

Listen to that radio, the one that’s playing while late little you is trying to get your left eye’s liner to match the hard-won cat-like swoop of your right while your husband paces anxiously by the door.  Hear that song in the background as you navigate the aisles of Target for the seventeenth time this week.  Stop for a minute and take in the whisper soft echoes of children’s choirs, the iPod hum under the din of the holiday parties, the meek and mildly caroling church bells on the corner…

A thrill of hope…

The weary world rejoices.

Weary.  Dude, you hear that, right?  Weary is your middle name these days.  Weary is the heavy coat you’ve been wearing around running errands in the cold, the way your ankle hurts in those party shoes, the stress of finishing the handmade everythings, the failing callouses on your left hand fingers,  the draining of your bank account.  Weary is the crashing into bed at 2am with glue still on your phone from answering email and crafting simultaneously until well after midnight.  Weary is the cold that won’t go away, that sick friend, sick kid, sick heart.  Weary is that hopeless little yes inside of you, the one that’s hiding under the far more boisterous “I can do it!” and “Leave it to me!” and “Yo, I got this.”

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices… for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Dearest beautiful girl, the dawn is coming.  Because after all of these deadlines, under the work and the stress and the details and the sticky phone screens, after all the cookies have been baked and bows have been tied, we are left with only Christmas.

Only Christmas.

Only you and a God who loved you so madly, so wildly, so magically, that he came with tiny hands, with failing flesh, to be held and snuggled and bathed and raised and loved and mocked and beaten and hailed and slaughtered and raised to bring you rest.  To bring you peace.  To bring you closer to where He is.

Fall on your knees.

Rest, little beautiful girl, because today there is the thrill of hope.  Today angels are singing with heavenly voices.  Today it is nearly Christmas, and your one job, your one responsibility this Christmas is to celebrate a miracle.  To love madly, wildly, magically.  To kneel before the hope of a baby with tiny hands, with failing flesh, to hold and whisper “Happy Birthday” to God with us.

Fall on your knees.

You are loved, precious girl.  What a gift you’ve been given.

love.