Christmas Magic
When we are kids, Christmas is a magical time. Nostalgically we carry our Christmas memories with us into adulthood. Even though Christmas is very different for us as adults, our childhood Christmas memories fill out adult Christmases with a childhood magic.
But Christmas is just not the same when we are older. When we were younger we believed in Santa Clause, and elves and flying reindeer and leaving cookies out for Santa and all the stories that go with it. We believed because we could believe, we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know how to not believe. Then as adults, we continue this fairy tale for our children because no adult wants to rob a child of living in such an enchanted world for just a few short years of their lives. We know that at some point their brains will develop the necessary functions that will make it impossible for them to believe. Once they leave that world, they can never return.
As adults, believing in the story of Christmas is just a distant memory. Now we are the ones who tell the story and create the experience for children to live out. But we are buying the presents and wrapping the presents and doing all the work to make Christmas happen. And despite all that, it is still somehow magical. And not just magical for children but for us too, if we let it. Despite all the stress and hustle and bustle, the world has a levity and cheerfulness about it. If we get past the reality of Christmas depending on us, and embrace the spirit of Christmas, we find an even greater joy. The joy of giving. Putting the effort into meaningful gifts because because we love the people we are giving gifts to makes it even more of a joy. “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is better to give than to receive’.” (Acts 20:35). Christmas changes as we get older and it was always meant to change. It would not take place if we all remained like little kids around Christmas, expecting Santa to come. As an adult, Christmas is about us creating Christmas. Yes it is a lot more work. Yes it costs us money. Yes we have to sacrifice in order to make it happen. And yes all the credit goes to someone else. But we get to participate in creating meaningful joy, creating Christmas magic for those we love.
Falling In Love
When I was nineteen, I met a girl where I worked and we fell in love. It was magical. Never having fallen in love before, everything was new and beautiful. Every touch, every conversation, every longing everything I felt was like I awoke from a long dreamless sleep and was living in a new magical world. At the time, I couldn’t imagine not feeling this way about this person for the rest of my life but alas it did not last. In fact six months down the road, we were broken up. It was far too powerful and intoxicating of a state for this19 year old boy whose brain and body were still developing.
From there I dated others, but how I felt paled in comparison to how I felt when I had fallen in love. I wanted so badly to experience feeling that way again. But falling in love is her own spirit. She can not be bought or found. She is like the wind. She comes out of nowhere and seems to stay for a while and then leaves. You cannot go find her or keep her captive. Like a drug, she expands your mind to what was once impossible to imagine. I was hooked. I wanted to feel that way again and I couldn’t settle for less but I couldn’t seem to find it in anyone as hard as I tried. I perhaps dismissed what may have been great relationships simply because they didn’t make me feel that high I longed for so badly. Like a vampire, once bitten, I will live all eternity by a different set of rules than the rest of the world.
I lived my whole life expecting to fall in love again. I believed it would happen again but this time I wouldn’t blow it. This time I would take all that I have learned and knowing the power of what I had, I would know how to handle it. And I waited. And waited. And waited. And after a failed marriage an several other girlfriends that I thought I was in love with but it didn’t work out, I think I lost my ability to fall in love ever again.
Just like when as a kid you realize that your parents are the ones that buy the presents and none of the Christmas story is real, and you can’t ever go back to believing in it again, I can’t go back to believing in falling in love again. Its a fairy tale. I can’t believe in soulmates and “the one”. I don’t believe that magic happens and two people “fall in love”. But this awakeing didn’t happen in one moment. I have arrived here not out of bitterness and failure. It is a lifetime (up to this point anyway) of seeing how people make relationships work and seem to stay “in love” with each other. Once you see how love works and that it takes decisions, and denying yourself and making sacrifices and paying the cost, and laying down your life out of love for someone else, you can’t go back to believing that it happens magically.
But it takes time to come to that realization. I have spent the last year reeling from two relationships that didn’t work out. I have felt a strong aversion to giving myself to anyone else. I didn’t decide to feel that way, but I recognize that I do. Sharing life and space with someone seems incomprehensible. I have a desire to life and space with someone but it is buried beneath so many unknowns. Before I get too excited about any possibilities my mind seems to calculate the risk/reward equation and I informs me that there is nothing here for me. So I live in this headspace of forever evaluating and running equations that seem to always produce 0 as the sum total.
But it kinda makes sense. Its like realizing theres no Santa. You can’t go back to believing in something that you know is just a made up story. This all may sound negative but really its not. I am not despairing. In fact, I think its a much better place to live. Because the reality is that I am the one and always have been, that gets to create and tell the story. No longer am I waiting around for love to find me. Or for me to find love for that matter. I know how to love and I get to create and give love. And that I believe is the new falling in love.
Good Enough vs Settling
We are all God’s children. God created us in his image. Though we are created in the image of God who is perfect, we were created imperfect and corruptible. Yet we all inherently continually search for perfection in all that we invite into our lives. That is part of our journey and that yearning for perfection is what drives us to leave behind what corrupts us thus moving us toward maturity. Yet none of us will ever reach perfection though we will always yearn for and move towards it. And thus we will never find perfection in anything that we ever invite into our lives. So a more mature falling in love, has learned to search for someone who is good enough. But there is a big difference between “good enough” and “settling”. Good enough finds someone who checks all the boxes in the “Gotta Haves” column, and some of the boxes in the “Nice to Have” column and in return they check all the right boxes for them as well. And realizing that they are never going to find somenone who checks all the boxes in both columns, in other words, someone who is our idea of perfect, says I can make it work and I want to make it work with this person. Young love expects to find someone perfect and loving them is going to be easy. We’ve all been there and when the pinprick of reality bursts that bubble we have two choices. We can go back out there and continue searching for the perfect person. Or we can change what a perfect person is going to look like for us. If finding the right someone hinges on them being perfect, we are always going to be carrying the burden of waiting to discover how this person too turns out not to be what I’m looking for. And we can never fully give ourselves to them. But only in letting go of that consternation and accepting that I have found someone who is perfectly good enough can I ever be committed to working through whatever comes up.
Not that I ever want to view relationships like commodities, but the new falling in love is not done by chance but by careful consideration and planning. From experiencing love and relationships, if you want to be successful at falling in love, you know that you have to consider the cost and if you are able to afford it. Just like anything, if you want something quality, that will last, you have to make an investment. The old way of understanding falling in love is like a child eating some delicious fruit and wanting to plant some seeds so they can always have fruit. The new falling in love is like a farmer planting some seeds to grow a garden. The seeds are still magic and have life in them. The difference is the child expects that that is all there is to it and nature does the rest and soon he will be reaping the rewards and eating the fruit. The farmer goes into it knowing that nature does not always help him. Nature sometimes helps but sometimes he needs to protect his garden from nature. He is prepared to get up early and work at it and learn from his mistakes and nurtures his garden. He knows that some years the harvest will be plentiful and others not so much. Some years the fruit will ripen to heavenly sweetness and others it may begin to rot on the vine. He doesn’t expect his corn to ever grow anything but corn and his peach trees to only yield peaches. The farmer is much more prepared to grow his garden because he understands the work involved. But that doesn’t diminish the magic or the sweetness of the harvest for him. In fact it makes it better.
I am not suggesting that I can just pick anyone and we can fall in love with each other just by creating that. And I don’t believe that there in just “the one” or “my soulmate”. I believe that I can create love and give it and there are those that are predisposed to receive love from me and I am predisposed to receive love from them. There is not just one soulmate but many. And I can search for someone, who can be the one that creates the story with me. I’m not talking about settling. Not everyone is right for everyone. But the love I have learned to give, someone is starving for. The wounds I have learned to heal, someone is suffering with. Someone has better lyrics to the song I play and a better punchline for the joke I’ve been telling. And they are the someone that I want to create love with.
Because the myth of falling in love is revealed for what it is doesn’t mean that there still isn’t a magical story behind it still. Just like as adults there is still this nostalgic residue of Christmas that comforts us. When make the trek up to the attic and start digging out the boxes of Christmas decorations and the smell of dust and cold waft up our nostrils shaking loose memories stored in our sinuses of helping dad with the lights, and decorating the tree with mom, the magic of Christmas is still alive in us, it has just metamorphisized into something different. Something greater. It is the same with falling in love. The fairy tale may no longer be anything that we are capable of believing but magic and innocence of that first time we went head-over-heels for someone is still with us. And we share that. Only it is more intentional now. We recognize it. We value it. We savor it when it emerges. But we have a lot more experience to know how to grow it and protect it and tame it.
Love is not going to just walk into my living room one day. If I want it, I have to go out and find it. I can’t be alone waiting for love to come find me. Love is something that I get to make happen. I get to create the story and the magic. But I have to sacrifice. I have to fight the crowds and put up with the hustle an bustle and the stress. And it is only worth it, if I believe its worth it. Because as long as I stay stuck in my idea that its only worth it if I am the receiver of it and not the giver, then it will never be worth it because that is just a fairy tale, a made up story.
But ultimately I can’t create love on my own. The above paragraphs I make it sound like “I” get to create it and “I” tell the story but it can only be created with someone else. I may be the pen, but I need to find someone who is the paper. Otherwise I’m just a pen with some ink and they are just blank paper still waiting for their story to be written.