I’ve tried to find it this year, I really have. Ironically, I think I’ve tried harder than any other year. I refused to stress about having things perfectly done, I did my best to be intentional about Advent, but I still couldn’t find the joy. I kept thinking it was just around the corner; get the kids out of school, let things slow down- I’d feel it then. Nope. I’m just distracted by the enormous open house we’re hosting for my husband’s colleagues- once that it over, it will “feel” like Christmas. We’ll bake cookies, listen to Christmas carols, relax and watch movies as a family. Um, no. Nothing but more feelings of frustration and sadness. What is my deal? I have no excuse; I know the joy and hope that is Christmas, I understand the magnitude of celebrating the birth of my Savior, and furthermore, I didn’t even set one foot in a mall this year! What could possibly make me feel so sad right now?

Christmas Eve came and went, with the only “tragedies” our blessed family experienced was finding one of my 4th grader’s frogs dead and not finding the copy of “Night Before Christmas” that we read every year. Still no excuse for the heaviness that seemed to envelop me.

Christmas morning was white, the presents were well chosen, our family was healthy, happy and warm, but still I had that nagging sadness, an ache that I couldn’t shake or ignore. Finally, I took some time to be alone with God. I confessed my frustration and allowed myself to explore my sadness instead of trying to shove it away. I would love to say that I became filled with joy, that all I needed was a little space to reflect, but that isn’t true. What happened was something different; it seems giving myself permission to accept my feelings at face value was the key to unlocking a dimension of the Nativity I’ve never considered.

Christmas really is the season of joy and hope, but below the surface of pretty pictures it’s also all kinds of emotions being covered by grace. Jesus was born in the midst of life interrupted. Even without Gabriel’s announcements, Mary and Joseph would’ve faced a mandatory pilgrimage ordered by the government. What about Bethlehem? The heavenly hosts weren’t the only visitors in town the night Jesus was born. It wasn’t arriving without a reservation that caused Mary and Joseph to find no room at the inn; there simply wasn’t any room. Families were displaced, travelers were weary, routines were disrupted. Many things were not going as planned. And yet, here is where God touched my heart specifically as he reminded me: God’s plan was right on schedule.

God wasn’t rushed, he wasn’t adapting to an unexpected situation, he wasn’t undone by what looked and felt like chaos. Finally, I got it. No, it still wasn’t the “Go Tell it on the Mountain” joy; it was the wonder of it all. I found the peace that comes from understanding we don’t have to “feel” like Christmas for Christ to come. We can be weary and burdened and sad on December 25 without dishonoring God. He didn’t come because the world was ready and eagerly anticipating him, he came because life is messy and the world is full of reasons to feel sad.

Bethlehem wasn’t prepared to welcome a king, Mary must’ve still been trying to wrap her brain around being chosen as the mother of God’s Son, Joseph didn’t attend childbirth classes, and the shepherds weren’t standing around discussing their views on the angels of heaven. Life was simply being lived. Days were stretching out without pretense and without having “acceptable” emotions imposed upon them. People were sad, tired, worried, happy, healthy, sick- all of the feelings involved in living another day. Then, in God’s perfect way and according to his perfect timing, Emmanuel! God is with us!

It wasn’t just into the muck and mire of a stable nursery, but down into the muck and mire of our emotions that Jesus came. This year I was reminded that God doesn’t require my joy or expect me to feel like a Norman Rockwell painting in order to prove I’m “ready” for Christmas. The irony is that being prepared means being willing to be honest and face my raw emotions as I trust that Jesus came for me in spite of my failings. Actually, he came because of my failings.  Feeling compelled to belt out “Joy to the World” as I bake beautiful cookies or serve the poor isn’t a sign of being ready for Christmas. Opening myself up to really feeling is the key to being ready- sad is ok. Tired is ok. Frustrated is ok. Joy? That’s a bonus!

My life breath is found in words- first God’s Word, then my thoughts and interaction with the application of it. There is a need, a desire, and an urgency I feel about words; the drive to write, reflect, and apply is wired into the core of my being. So many thoughts are constantly swirling inside myself- rarely do I have the quiet space necessary to process, to craft, to order the words into a tapestry that speaks to others. And so I “free-write” in my journals, meaning that the only thing I do is allow thoughts to fall out of my brain and onto the page, unedited and unorganized.

Yet as I reflect on the memory of my Grandma “making me” keep a journal on our trips to Michigan, I am reminded of writing can manifest itself completely differently in the same exercise. Grandma’s travel journals served as benchmarks of progress- departure times, clean rest stops, good places to grab lunch. Her journals, filled with decades of marking time: date, time & activity, are exactly the opposite of mine. My travel journals are reflective, an exploration of the interplay between where I’ve been and who I’m becoming. Travel seems to create a sense of suspended animation, the state of being caught in the journey between preparation and arrival.

The odd realization that my Grandma’s journals would reveal no insight into her emotional journey doesn’t lessen my wish to have them today. Somehow being able to see time marked by her own hand, to read minutes of the only travel they ever made outside their daily life, to see minutes recorded as though the very act of writing them would make them linger, would be strangely comforting to me.

The thing about Grandma’s journals is that she kept them year after year, and was even known to bring along old ones for reference. And yet, here in this collage of memories is the undeniable truth that she always went to the same place at the same time, taking the same route, year after year. If you only travel a road you know well, it takes more effort to observe new things. If you travel the same road but once a year, it takes great effort to only observe things unchanged.

I feel that my life is an unrevealed path that only God understands. Dates, places and experiences are noted in my journals to provide context, but remain the only static element in my writing. Unlike Grandma’s need to faithfully record every major mile marker along the way and the time we passed it, my writing is the journey itself.

I now see that there is also value in Grandma’s seemingly passionless recording of time, date, and place. Her journals were literally to the minute: “7:02am-pulling out.” Yep, she really said that. The funniest thing to me, as I am a self-proclaimed “journal snob” who judges value by binding, line and size, is that Grandma only used little two-by-three inch spiral notebooks- the kind you find practically free in any store, and so small that there wasn’t even room for her to write “pulling out of the driveway.” She only used a single line for each entry.

The first time I travelled to Michigan with them, Grandma proudly presented me with my own journal and proceeded to teach me how to use it. I spent the entire week erasing writing that was too big, and trying different strategies for making my volume of thoughts fit on a single small line. After growing frustrated from trying to fit the ocean in a paper cup, I forged my own method. I see now that trying to demonstrate or explain my free-writing journal technique would likely have been equally futile and puzzling to my Grandma.

Grandma’s writing became quick and efficient records of where the family was on their annual trek to Michigan. And yet is that so different from my own journal? I may write 500 words at a time and fill page after page before I finish, but am I not still trying to capture, compare, and record where I am in time and how that compares to where I expected to be?

Remembering Grandma’s journals somehow comforts me to realize a larger truth, that even as my daily life is completely different on the surface, I am still a woman seeking to keep a record of my journey. The difference lies in our voice, and our perspective. Grandma viewed their annual drive from Indiana to Michigan as the only journey worth noting. My literal travel gives me the space to reconsider and contemplate the daily journey through life that I record on a regular basis.