Christmas Tears

I’ve been thinking about tears lately. They wash away emotions too heavy to endure, too tangled to name. They keep us from imploding.

With a sigh of discouragement and exasperation, an acquaintance once asked me, “What’s wrong with the world?

My reply, “We were created for a perfect world, but we’re not in one.” I was referring of course to Eden before Adam and Eve’s fateful decision that separated us from God.

As I write, I’m wondering if there were tears in Eden. My posit, certainly, since tears are an overflow of the heart, and our emotions convey not only negative reactions, but positive. Surely there were tears of awe, at being in the physical presence of God. Tears of delight at the beauty of a pristine world. Tears of joy in the bonds of completely innocent relationships.

But here we are on earth.

I’ve shared before that I was adopted as a baby, the result of an illegitimate birth. My brother was also adopted, the result of another couple’s extramarital relationship. However, he was in two foster homes, one abusive, before he joined our family at age four. By abusive, I mean he told me a story as an adult about being locked in a closet without a pillow. Those were all the details he chose to share, or all his child’s mind could thankfully recall.

I was six when he first came into our family, and I remember hearing my brand-new brother sobbing in the bedroom at the end of the hall.

When I was in my sixties, and he was near homeless from alcoholism, my mom told me he used to wake her after nightmares and ask, “How far away is California?’ At the time, she didn’t know why.

As an adult, he found his birth mom. She was already deceased, but there were pictures. She was a beauty. And records. She worked as a model. After all the pieces were put together, I learned she’d dropped him off at the adoption agency, saying, “I’m going to California, but I’ll come back for you.” Perhaps a well-intended, yet faulty means of comfort.

He also found two half-sisters. They were not in California, but a city on the banks of the Mohawk River in upstate New York. They told him this story. Every Christmas their mom hung an ornament on the tree for the half-brother they’d never met but knew by name.

Although I wasn’t privy to their reunion, were there tears? You’d think buckets, but I wonder. My brother spent his life drowning his tears in alcohol before they could escape, trapping the emotions he most needed to purge.

This will be the first Christmas without him, and I realize Christmas, ironically, is all about tears. God’s tears. God also knows my brother by name. He knows all our names, and all the details of what happened in the closets of our lives.

Did Mary cry tears of hope mingled with disbelief when the angel, Gabriel, told her to name her baby Jesus because he would grow up to be the savior of a world full of tears? Did Joseph cry tears of betrayal mixed with confusion at the news that his betrothed was already with child? Did the shepherds cry tears of wonder when they saw the heavenly host?

Last October in a rest home, my brother died with a smile on his face, so said the nurse who cared for him at the last. After a lifetime of complicated emotions concerning all the mess that alcohol brought into our relationship, my eyes mist at the thought, that he’s in a better place, free at last from his demons.

It sounds cliché unless it’s true. Unless the babe in a manger is God’s answer to the question, what’s wrong with this world.

Whatever the source of your tears this season, my friend, may our Father in heaven comfort you with the reality that Christmas is His way of coming back for us all.

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

Matt. 1:23 (NLT)

Cover photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2022