The Joy and Fear of Christmas

...something of that joy and fear
come together in Advent and Christmas

The afternoon of December 7, 1983 found me waiting in my office for Ginger to call me after her final interview with the social worker who was completing the home study for our adoption.  Time passed and there was no word.  In fact, the time that Ginger’s interview should have been completed was long past and I was starting to get worried.  I even began to think that we had been turned down, probably due to something wrong I had said at my final interview earlier in the day.  I could imagine Ginger crying her eyes out somewhere after the social worker had delivered the terrible news.

It was about 5:30 in the afternoon before I looked up from my desk and saw Ginger there.  Indeed, it was obvious that she had been crying and I thought to myself that my worst fears had been confirmed.  Instead, though, Ginger looked at me and said simply, “You have a son.”  At that point, I started to cry.

Is out that what had happened is that the social worker’s final question to Ginger was, “Do you think you’re ready for a baby.”  She had asked me the same question, and Ginger, as had I, had answered, “Yes.”  Only this time, instead of saying that they’d get back to us, the social worker had said, “Good, because I have a referral of a baby boy for you.”  She gave Ginger some basic information and a photograph. The reason Ginger was so late in getting the news to me was that she wanted to deliver it in person and with all the excitement she found herself unable to remember exactly how to get to my office.

What a startling announcement!  Utterly unexpected.  I’ll never forget those words and their impact on me.  “You have a son.”  And all I could do was cry.  I don’t think I had cried in years, and now I couldn’t stop.  I would try and regain my composure and tears would start to flow again. I would think I had myself calmed down enough to place calls to our parents and let them know the news.  As soon as someone answered, though, I would start to cry again and had to hand the phone to Ginger so that she, who is the “emotional one” in our relationship, could share the news.  And, of course, life has never been the same again.

Now that my children are entering adulthood, I look back on that announcement and both remember and wonder.  I remember with great joy.  I wonder, though, if there wouldn’t have been some fear mixed in with the joy if I had had any idea what being a parent was really about.  I wonder what I might have thought if I’d known at that moment when I first heard that I had a son what my feelings might have been if I had known in advance about the night I would sit by my son’s hospital bed after the doctor told us that his chances of surviving meningitis would be improved if he lived through the first night.  I wonder what I might have thought if I had known in advance about how I’d feel when the local Cub Scout pack refused to allow him to be a member because he wasn’t white.  I wonder what I might have thought if I had known in advance about the summer of his knee surgery.  And, of course, I wonder what I might have thought if I’d had any idea about adolescence at all.  And then, I also wonder what my life might have been like had I not been able to see his excitement in planning a surprise for me on my birthday a few days ago that he financed with his own money now that he is working part-time.

And all that starts me to wondering about another adoptive family and what they knew and what they wondered for themselves when they received the same news, “You have a son,” not from Ginger but from Gabriel.  Joseph must have done his share of wondering. Matthew tells us he almost divorced Mary.  And, God knows, Mary must have wondered, too, at the news that she would be God’s partner in the salvation of the world and at Simeon’s curious foretelling in the Temple that a sword would pierce her own soul in the child’s destiny.

I wonder if they knew in advance that they would have to flee to Egypt to avoid their son’s murder in Bethlehem.  I wonder if they knew in advance about that day when they would nearly lose their child in the hustle and bustle and crowds of Jerusalem at festival time only to find him in the Temple.  I wonder if they knew that he would not grow up to take his place in the family business but would wander around the countryside instead with, as the Bible tells us, no place to lay his head.  I wonder if they knew that he would replace them by a family of his own choosing.  I wonder if they knew about that terrifying and horrible Friday at the Passover one year.

The joy they felt, I imagine, could not have been any greater than what Ginger and I felt.  The fear, though, I suspect may have been much, much more.  I wonder what they knew.  I wonder what they feared.  I wonder how they did it.

And it is something of that joy and fear that come together in Advent and Christmas.  The joy of the gift of a child.  The fear of what that might mean in our lives if we really take it in.  That is what I wish for this Christmas, not only the joy I have felt myself and the joy of Mary and Joseph, but also their courage to accept what having God’s son in their lives would mean.  Sometimes I wonder if anyone would do it if they knew what was ahead, bring a child into their lives, and especially this particular child. But we do.  And it began with Mary and Joseph with both joy and fear.

Ginger, Andrew, and Matthew join in me in wishing you all a joyful, and perhaps a little fearful, Christmas.