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Shepherding Christmas

ByJunius Johnson

It is well known that Christmas is a season of joy and wonder, a magical time that is a sort of fountain of youth for the heart. For in it we all see the world with younger eyes, borrowed from the children in our lives, or that poor, wounded child who still sleeps in the depths of our hearts. It is that child, the one who lives in our inner darkness, we have to come to terms with if we want to be who we hope to be for our own children.

For we have known hurt, loss, betrayal, abandonment, and rejection. We have known them so well that they are like a skin we wear: the scar tissue of our hearts. Therapists tell us that in our worst moments, when we feel least in control (the sort of moments the holidays tend to bring out in us), it is that inner child who is piloting the ship. We grow angry, or distant, or petty, or mean out of defensiveness, but what are we defending? We are defending our hearts against a pain we have felt before and would do anything not to feel again. Our wounds have made us small.

Because I know all of that, it is not only my own heart I would defend. I would above all defend my children’s hearts. Indeed, I could almost be willing to take on all the sorrow of the world if only I knew that as a result there would be none left for my children to carry. After all, the desire to protect our children is almost the first desire to arise in a parent’s heart.

Almost the first, but not the first. When the desire to shelter this new life first arises in our hearts, it finds that that heart is already filled with love. We love our children, and for that reason we long to protect them.

But this is where it gets interesting, because love is such an all-encompassing power. It will not rest content with half measures or approximations. It demands our all. And it demands it in service of the two goals of love: the good of the other and union with the other. When we love someone with true love, we want the good for them, and we want to enjoy spending time with them. But because love is other-focused, if these two should come into conflict, there is no question which will win: the good of the beloved. If for some reason it should turn out to be the case that my presence is bad for the beloved, to the extent that my love is true, I will avoid that person so that they may be free to pursue their good.

Human loves and desires have a trajectory towards excess, which leads to deformity in our hearts. This is the heritage of sin. It doesn’t take much to be deformed: anything that grows either too large or too small for its proper place will render the whole to which it belongs monstrous. And for parents, the easiest deformity is one that wills the safety and protection of the child over all else. I know the danger of this: my mother tried to protect me from all physical hurts, and so would not let me climb trees, or go out in the snow, and so on. She did so because she loved me deeply, but in doing so she failed to teach me physical resilience. And I am not better: when my children express a hope for something I think unlikely, I find myself immediately wanting to bring their expectations down to earth; and in so doing, I inadvertently teach them not to dream, not to have hopes bigger than life, to settle for the dreary and expected.

Why? We know our hurts, and the harm they have done in us, and still do in us. Shouldn’t we protect our children from that at all costs? No, for two reasons. First, because we also know the good this pain has done in us. To name only one very crucial thing: it grounds our capacity for compassion. “Compassion” means suffering along with someone, but one who has never known suffering cannot come alongside the hurt of others. And it belongs to the human well established in the grace of God to be compassionate. We cannot comfort others with the comfort we have received (2 Corinthians 1:4) if we have never needed to be comforted.

The second reason is that they cannot avoid pain anyway. This world is a valley of tears, and no amount of protection will change that. Just to be here at all is to feel pain, to know suffering: existence itself is a burden in a world not yet transformed into its glorious state.

Our job as parents is not to protect them from pain, but to shepherd them through it; to fill their moments of pain with love, understanding, and acceptance. We don’t have the power to free them from pain, but we do have the power to show them that pain is not ultimate, that there are things deeper and more powerful than pain, powerful enough to heal even the pain of heartbreak. We cannot suffer instead of them, but we can and must suffer with them, and that becomes a reservoir of inner strength they will carry with them all of their lives. After all, Christmas is the story of God with us.

Junius Johnson
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