As Christmas came to Northern Virginia, with the malls, traffic, shopping, parties, travel plans, and baking, I was fighting with this “real meaning of Christmas” thing in the midst of all the rush and fuss. While I did get into “giving to others,” I still felt overwhelmed by the rush and busyness. Little did I know what lay in store!

    After saying “Good bye!” to all our friends, and right before we were to leave town on Christmas Eve, my wife, Lynn, became sick. We cancelled our flight, missed my brother’s surprise at the Nashville airport, and landed in Fairfax hospital on Christmas Eve. After waiting 8 hours for an “emergency” CAT scan, the floor nursing supervisor finally yelled enough to get us in. On the way down to get the scan, we passed a grieving family outside of intensive care. Christmas Eve is a hard time to be in the hospital!

    Christmas morning found us still unsure what was wrong. We were tired, had missed flights to visit our families, were surrounded by the ill and grieving, and no one was aware we were still in town. Lynn was full of IV’s, drugged, and watching Scrooge and “A Christmas Story” (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”) on the hospital little TV, trying not to think of our failed plans while dozing off every so often.

    Sitting there, it hit me: “Hey, this is Christmas morning and a lot of people are with their families having a good time.” There were food commercials to remind me of the great feasts you we wouldn’t be attending. There were big church services that made me think, “God, I wish I were with them celebrating this day!” There was the Pope reading his blessing to the crowds, and all I saw was an IV rack and an empty hospital bed. I can really see why some people are very blue during the Holidays. I can tell you this; we were both pretty low at that point.

    So after waiting till present-opening time was probably over, we decided to call a couple in our small group from church. We thought, “If they were in the hospital on Christmas with no one nearby, we would feel badly if they didn’t call us.” They were packing to leave for the next day, but spoke with us for a while, and were very compassionate.

    After more sitting, the silence was suddenly broken with voices down the hall. It hit me that someone had given up their own Christmas morning to come to a dreary hospital and sing to others! Two groups came by. The first missed us, but the second group came right to our door and sang to us. We didn’t look too festive, but we didn’t care. I craned my neck to see them and try to mouth, “Thank you!”....then I lost it. Tears started streaming down my face. A little girl darted out of their group into our room. She gave Lynn a homemade get-well card, then they left.

“OK. It’s really Christmas now.”

    I’m starved, so I decided to go get some food. On a whim, instead of going home as I had planned, I stopped in the hospital cafeteria and brought my tray back to the room. To my great joy, the couple from church is sitting there, smiling and talking with Lynn. They stayed an hour and a half! It was a wonderful time. The wife brought a festive plate of Christmas dinner for me (Lynn, unfortunately, was getting hers through a tube), with little colorful chocolates for dessert. Getting that plate meant the world to me. Somewhere, in the midst of their visit, a long way from our planned families, feasts, and celebrations, something inside me awakened: “OK. It’s really Christmas now.”

    Lynn was discharged the next night, and 2 days later was up and about. We even made an after-Christmas sale with her family, due to a hastily rearranged flight (thank you God and Southwest Airlines).

    Somewhere during our experience we had unexpectedly encountered “real meaning of Christmas!” A hospital in not a nice place to be stuck when others are in their homes and churches, but neither was a barn when others were in the hotel.... the scene of the first Christmas. “No room at the inn” sunk in a bit. I thought about Joseph...

...with his convalescing wife (Probably not in the best condition after a long trip followed by labor and delivery!);
...away from family and friends;
...on what should have been an exciting and warm and blessed event — the birth of a first child;
...with the pressure of trying to take care of things away from the traditional help on the one hand, and not really understanding what is going on the other.
...and the desire to be celebrating the birth of a son like other men normally did, but instead being surrounded by goats and sheep. (At least we had great nurses.)

I could suddenly really empathize with Joseph!

    I think how much the visit of the shepherds and the wise men must have meant. Bringing gifts from afar, human touch, reassurance, celebration that he must have longed for, and most of all, the gift of love. These visitors brought the love of God. They reveal a God who truly cares. Although God orchestrates great events from on high, they showed he is really not so far away after all.

    The singers were our shepherds, and the couple our wise men, and a paper plate of food our frankincense and myrrh. No. We weren’t birthing the Son of God, but I can assure He was there.

    The real meaning of Christmas is that God loves us very much. Bottom line: God reaches out to those in dire straits. Humanity badly needed the gift of God’s Son. God saw our need and came through, as He always does. A confused and stressed husband is not beyond the scope of God’s grace, nor is anyone else.

    What I saw and felt during that Christmas made me want to find and do something for others less fortunate next year. It helped me realize there are often trials outside our warm and wonderful walls. God would help us help in some small way. He’s orchestrating the efforts, but we can help with the plan. That’s what’s really behind this “giving” thing at Christmas... that’s what Christmas is really about.

Title: "The Unexpected Christmas"
Author: Ken Smith
Publication Date: December 25, 2001

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