The Flip Side

It’s Christmas season again.  My 10th one since moving to China.  10 seems like a big number and has had me feeling thoughtful.  Thinking through all of the Christmases we have had in this place.  Realizing that all of those Christmas’s here signify so many Christmases that I haven’t spent “at home”.  Realizing that for my children, Christmas here IS Christmas “at home”.  The traditions that we have made as a family here are the ones that they will remember and hold onto in their hearts the same way I remember and hold onto the ones from my own childhood.  Our two experiences are very different but each special in their own way.  I don’t regret any of our Christmas’s spent here.  They have each been a beautiful celebration of the birth of our Savior.  Across the years we have shared them with some very wonderful people.  But the flip side of that same wonderful coin is the sad truth that I have missed an equal number of Christmases with my own family and friends back home.  The sadness of one doesn’t make the joy of the other any less.  Nor does the joy of the one make the sadness of the other any less. 

A similarly painful but beautiful truth has recently presented itself.  One year ago this month, we lost our sweet friend Vangile.  If you read my blogs regularly then you will remember that story.  Everything this fall and now this Christmas season reminds me of her.  When I casually stop to remember what I was doing this time last year, it is her face that I see.  We are almost to the one year mark and so many little things bring back those many painful memories of her sickness and ultimate death.  But mixed in with that are all the memories of her smile, her sweetness, and her testimony of faith.  So often we never get to know the reason why we loose the ones that we love.  We must simply believe with faith that God is good and His plans are good and so our losses although hard are also somehow good.  This is not an easy truth.  But out of this loss and the deep sorrow that it brought to so many of us, has come a deep joy.  One of the friends that Vangile loved so well and shared Jesus with so faithfully has joined the family of God.  Since Vangile’s death she has been coming and listening and pondering and struggling with the truth.  She wanted to know Vangile’s Jesus and to understand why and how the love of Him had so deeply marked her short life.  She has sat and asked hard questions and come to understand equally hard and beautiful truth.  Her upbringing and her culture demand that she pay honor to many gods, so coming to believe that Jesus is the only way was not easy.  In the end she said with deep emotion, “Now I understand.  Today I must become a new person, I can no longer be the person I was born as, today that person must die and I must become an entirely new person, a follower of Jesus”  So with the most bittersweet of joy she threw away her literal physical idols, renounced the history that tied her to them, and became born again in the most true sense that there is.  As she has told us her story, actually she had heard the truth many times, from many people, in many countries and at many different times of her life.  I was surprised by the number of encounters she had had with the truth.  But by her own admission it took Vangile’s testimony of life followed by her untimely (to us) death to wake her up.  She feels sad that Vangile needed to die for she herself to see the truth.  But as we have told her with full assurance, Vangile does not feel that way.  She had a front row seat at the party in heaven for the lost sheep that was found.  Knowing Vangile’s heart here on earth and knowing where she is now, I feel fully certain that she has counted the cost and found it worth the price.   It doesn’t lessen how much I miss Vangile, but it does color the missing with a bit of understanding and an undertone of joy.  And we know that we have not truly lost our Vangile, she has just gone ahead to wait for us, and as we keep walking the road of life without her, we have gained another sister to join us on our journey. 

The Christmas season with it’s traditions and excitement is perhaps bittersweet at times for many of us for our own personal reasons.  Memories of Christmas’s past, reminders of empty chairs at the table, another year passed with a dream or a hope unfulfilled just to name a few.  But how wonderful that at the heart of this season is the ancient but very true story of all of creation (all of us) groaning in waiting for the coming of our Messiah.  And then He came in the most unexpected of ways, to the most unlikely of people, but still with the message of hope and joy that we all needed.  We are not forgotten, and even in our sin and un-loveliness, He loved us and came for us.  At great personal cost He redeemed us.  And Christmas is proof (by way of a hundreds of kept promises) that He is coming again.  No matter what your circumstance or your story, that is something to be joyful about this Christmas season.



2 Cor 4:15-19 “So we do not loose heart.  Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.  As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.  For the things that are seen are temporary but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

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