Blue Christmas

I'm a night person. It seems like the right side of my brain wakes up when the sun goes down. I've written some of my best BS between the hours of 10P.M. and 3A.M. The whole cotton candy novel (all fluff and no substance, get it?) that I wrote back in 9th grade was composed when most other people were sleeping. Nothing else is going on late at night - nothing is on T.V. except reruns and infomercials, no one is awake to talk to, and I practically don't have any other obligations because technically I'm are supposed to be in bed - so it's the perfect time to form very lucid, uninterrupted thoughts. I usually think of this as an awesome gift, especially considering my field of study, but lately it's been an absolute burden.

Last night I was up until 3A.M. because I couldn't stop thinking. And these weren't enlightened, world-changing thoughts either, they were actually really upsetting. I thought about this in particular. A month ago I thought that everything was coming up roses - I had just changed my major to something that I absolutely love, my mom had agreed to let me get a cat, this hellish semester was almost over and I was going to get to go home and spend a whole month lounging around my house with my family. I had visions of tons of Christmas baking and wrapping presents and gift-exchanges at grandma's house and it was all very Norman Rockwell. I was supposed to wake up on my birthday and on Christmas morning and bark at my dad to stop taking pictures of me and my awful bed-head (like I always do). Now my dad doesn't even know how to push the botton on his hospital bed to call the nurse.

I have a really hard time reconciling my dad from a month ago who pitched the tents and made the fire when we went camping with my dad today who only gets out of bed for physical therapy. On Thanksgiving my dad was roasting turkeys, wrestling with his under-done sweet potatoes, smoking cigars, and watching the Cowboys with my uncle. That's how he should be spending Christmas as well, but there's no smoking in hospitals and Cowboys games are too much for him to comprehend.

I laid in bed for an hour last night tossing, turning, and occassionally crying about all of this and then I stopped trying to go to sleep and I picked up my Bible and read Lamentations. It was horrifically depressing but among all of the lines of hopelessness and melancholy I found one verse that was particularly poignant: Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love. I kept repeating that to mysef and I was asleep within 5 minutes.

Now, seeing as how I've never faced any crisis quite like this before, I'm not sure what tradition says about relating to God in times like these, all I know is how I'm going about it. For the first few days after it happened I was too scared/confused/whatever to pray, but now praying and finding verses like the one above are the only things that make me feel better. I think that popular opinion suggests being mad at God and blaming Him, and while I do "blame" Him to some degree (because, obviously, the stroke was His idea), I'm enrolled in the school of thought that believes that everything happens for a reason. My dad didn't just have a stroke because God was ready for a change of pace, He's planned other things that are going to happen/have already happened as a result of dad's stroke. By all accounts, my dad should have died because the stroke was so massive, but not only is he still alive, he's also recovering faster than anyone could have imagined. God has more plans for my dad and for our family as a whole. I know that God would never dole out suffering for kicks and somehow everything that's happened stems from His love of me and my family and His interest in our well-being, and I could never be mad at Him for that.

I know this whole post was really untoward and a bit out of character (and the last couple of paragraphs were certainly un-Lutheran) but somehow writing it all down made me feel a little bit better.