Oh Holy Night

by Danielle S. Castillejo

(art by Julie Castillejo)

December 10, 2020

Dear Friends,

The thought of Christmas brings me both joy and grief. Every. Single. Year. And every single year I pull out Christmas music and gravitate to “Oh Holy Night” by Mariah Carey. As a teenager, I discovered her Christmas album and had one of those ancient cassette tapes - connected to a wire - connected to my CD player. Am I even remembering that right? It was a sort-of-conversion device to play compact discs in my car. (That’s a clue to just how old I am.)

One Christmas, I was delivering Domino’s Pizza and playing “Oh Holy Night” over and over and over. Picture a 23- year-old college graduate without imagination for where she could belong. The tears didn’t stop. Before exiting the car, walking up to the front doors of homes with hot pizza, I remember rubbing my eyes on my long-sleeved shirt. I didn’t want to give away sadness to the pizza customers - not at Christmas. Those Christmas pizza delivery days were a great relief. My window cracked, music blaring, and me weeping. There weren’t any places I could go and express the sadness lurking around Christmas for me.

I needed those drives. I needed to tell the truth. The thrill of hope lingered inside me - the weight of the glory of the birth of Jesus. And, I wept for what I was still waiting for. I wept for the ache of all of the waiting I had been doing, and I didn’t even know all of the waiting that was yet to come. But, I knew Jesus meant something glorious to me without knowing what that would be or look like.

As Dr. Dan Allender said in our recent podcast, “The greatest weapon against evil is this baby Jesus.” Maggie goes on to express, “So even with hope coming, it still feels like there is more waiting, both in this season at Christmas and in COVID….” Dr Dan Allender then states (what follows) what I feel in my bones, “There is just a fundamental hatred of having to wait. The reality of waiting triggers in us deep fear and entitlement. The ache and tension of advent is “He’s come!” and “When are you going to put all things right again? How much longer?”

If you too find yourself weeping and joyful, angry and hopeful, lingering in memories of the past, hoping for connection in the future, you are not alone. The long days of December 2020 bring fresh tears for what I imagine is the cleansing of so much pain, frustration and anger. These tears give way for my greatest joys and lead me to a place of awe - where the baby Jesus changes everything.

Blessings,

Danielle

The full episode of our latest podcast with Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen can be accessed wherever you get your podcasts and at this link:

S2E10: Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton-Chen on Advent and Holding Tension

Also, my co-host Maggie Hemphill gives further voice to Advent here:

The Tension in Waiting: Reflections on Advent by Maggie Hemphill