“Wasn’t it hard to spend Christmas in the hospital?”
She had just started reading Relentless Grace and I guess the story prompted thoughts of the approaching holiday.
Encouraging tales often emerge from difficult circumstances. CHRISTMAS IN A HOSPITAL might make a good title for an inspirational story, but it wouldn’t be my choice for personal experience. ICU wasn’t the ideal backdrop for a Christmas memory.
Christmas conjures images of warm fires and carpets strewn with wrapping paper. A sterile room provides a poor substitute for stockings hung on the mantle and kids flitting from new toy to new toy as parents try to keep all of the pieces together. The Night Before Christmas loses most of its rich imagery in the context of medical equipment and nurses wearing Santa hats.
But Christmas isn’t all about gifts and decorations and feasts. As much as we all cherish our particular family traditions, Christmas is a time when life softens a bit. Apart from the mad rush of shopping and travel and preparation, Christmas affords an opportunity to focus, however briefly, on what truly matters to us. Family and friends, love and peace, health and joy–these remain long after lights fade and toys are forgotten.
Hospitals, hospices, prisons, and rehab centers don’t close for Christmas. Overwhelming financial uncertainty doesn’t recognize holidays. Loneliness and depression don’t take a week off. For all those who spend this Christmas in difficult situations, I wish a special sense of hope. I pray that they’ll experience the true meaning of Christmas.
I pray that they’ll be touched by the baby whose birth in troubled circumstances signaled glad tidings of great joy for all of us.
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