with us
an unlikely Christmas letter
“God hears the crash and cries of our great fall and comes running. Emmanuel rushes through time and space to be not just near our hurt, but human with us in it.”
God With Us has new significance to me this year.
If you were ever involved in spiritually abusive circles, perhaps you’re familiar with the angst of coming out the other side. It’s a journey that some authors call “disentangling” —taking a tangled ball of ideologies and separating lies from truth. And, of course, like any tangled ball of yarn, at some point you’re tempted to throw the whole thing away before the snags finally start to come free.
So it’s safe to say that my understanding of Emmanuel has had some refining. This year, my view of myself in relation to God has felt tender and hard to explain, like I’m tiptoeing into a new room I’ve only ever seen through a keyhole. Maybe one day I’ll have more words about that.
And this new understanding of God With Us is influencing the way I view the church.
For many of us, “church hurt” isn’t a pop phrase. It’s real, haunting, and can cross the line into trauma.1
And the season of Advent can highlight it.
But let’s back up. The first church I really remember was in south Louisiana. My memories are centered around dear souls I still love today—people who genuinely care. When I was eight, sometimes I’d join my mom in her Sunday school class, with its blue carpet, enormous fluorescent lights, and huge circle of chairs, complete with two rocking chairs for the mamas with babies. I’d sit still and quiet during the prayer request time, listening while women of all ages and walks of life shared their pain, struggles, joys, and fears with brilliant candor and vulnerability. I don’t remember the details of what was said, but I’ll never forget the way they studied the Bible, laughed, and passed the Kleenex to dry each other’s tears.
They were “with” each other in their humanity, not just intellectually but in an embodied way, and grown-up me now recognizes it for the rarity it was.
In fact, years later, after a move and some less-than-pleasant church experiences, I couldn’t imagine my wedding anywhere except the place where I felt at home as a child. And so, on a spring day, I slipped into a white gown in that exact Sunday school classroom. I could feel the residual love and prayers from my girlhood wafting out of the walls and ceiling as I prepared to walk down the aisle.
At Christmas, we often focus on the fact that Christ came to save. But he also came to dwell among us. He came to love us not just by defeating death as the Lamb of God but also by touching us, seeing us, hearing us, healing us, and crying with us as he walked the earth.
I wonder if we’ve forgotten how to be WITH each other, the way Emmanuel is WITH us. If the Son of God (while fully God) humbled himself to be fully human, I don’t think it should be such a huge stretch for us to sit gently and curiously with the humanity of those around us. It isn’t enough to be near each other—to simply say hi in our Sunday best.
Advent isn’t just the season of holly jolly red and green. It’s a season of waiting and aching being answered with the crashing joy of presence—which tends to get ignored in the name of the Christmas spirit. I’m guilty of being too distracted or rushed to see when the person in front of me is barely holding on behind their smile. We’ve failed if those who are broken in our midst are shuffled off with platitudes, especially at Christmas.
I think we’re missing out on incredible goodness if we don’t get up the courage to open our lives and hearts to each other. And that starts in tiny ways…as tiny as the Savior’s cells forming in a woman’s womb. Advent is about the gutting grandeur of peace with God, zoomed into mundane moments.
And so it starts with us coming with our confusion, our chaos, our trust issues, and our faithlessness. When we feel like we don’t have the perfect words, or we’re worried about asking or saying the wrong thing, in the words of poet Jess Janz:
Maybe we can say, I don’t know where to start, so I’m starting here.”
Maybe we can emulate what Advent celebrates—the Word becoming flesh—and find ways to not just be near each other but be WITH each other.
Join me?
Merry Christmas, friend.
I love the church, imperfect as it is, because HE loves the church. You won’t ever read bashing or potshots in this publication. This post from Josh Nadeau sums up my current perspective. I think we can have hard, honest conversations while loving a local gathering.
So, that's what it's called: disentangling. What an apt word. As someone who comes from a lifetime of spiritual abuse in a cult-like denomination that considered itself the True Church, I've described the extrication process as like doing surgery. The false doctrine wraps its tentacles around you and does not let you go easily. Getting out from under it all is a process involving time and often fear because what you are disposing of was once considered the difference between heaven and hell. In that group, if you don't get certain elements of your doctrine right....it's tough cookies for you, regardless of how well-intentioned you might have been. That can be scary stuff.
But, I now have a new appreciation now for the "heart." I once esteemed head knowledge above all things. Now, I'm learning the value of an experience of God that very much involves the heart. I'm slowly moving into it. Better late than never. (And this, then, ties into your post about being "with" God and people....from the heart.) :-)
Merry Christmas and thank you for another lovely post.
Ellen R.
Love it. And some church pain can be rooted in not teaching/living the true meaning of Emmanuel: God with us - truly exercising this in our lives knowing Christ is literally in our midst. God with us = Jesus and His love operating in u, so that when those in need are aching for comfort during pain and shame, we as the body of Christ, can effortlessly extend “God with us” (versus shame, ridicule, and defeat that many experience when they fall short).