Hope in the Christmas Story

The Christmas Story offers hope even in the middle of our darkest season - I would say especially in our darkest season. It's not uncommon for us to dress up the Christmas story and remove the grittiness and the humanity from it. Lets take a closer look. Let's talk about the very real emotional drama that was unfolding. There is so much comfort in the realization that this is where Jesus chose to enter the story as Emanuel God with us - God with us in the middle of emotional mess, God with us in the middle of imperfection. I am not alone, God is with me in the middle of it all.

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I use that word rebuild because we are specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

If that's you, if you feel like you're having to start over and do a midlife reboot, first, I want to say I'm sorry.

I know how bad that feels.

It feels overwhelming and itchy to have all your plans for the future change, and you kind of have to just start over.

But I'm here to tell you, it gets better.

It may feel itchy in the moment.

It may feel itchy now, but there is so much hope and so much joy, and so much goodness on the other side.

I promise you, you are not alone.

You're actually in the right place.

So welcome.

I'm so glad that you're here.

So let's get down to today's episode.

Today, we're going to talk about the Christmas story.

And if you're anything like me, when I was in the middle of my dark season, as much as I had loved Christmas, and Christmas is still my very favorite holiday, in the middle of a really dark season, I really didn't want to celebrate Christmas.

The only reason why I celebrated Christmas those years was for my children.

I really just wanted it to be over with.

I just wanted it to be done.

I didn't feel joyous.

I didn't feel happy.

I didn't feel all those things.

And seeing everybody else joyful just felt like a painful reminder of what I had lost.

It just didn't feel good.

So if that's you, I do understand, but I'm here to bring you comfort from the Christmas story, some hope from the Christmas story, maybe a different perspective than you've thought about before, a little bit of a different point of view.

I think in modern society, we look at the nativity and the Christmas story, and it is beautiful and perfect.

I mean, most nativities that I see, they're wearing beautiful clothing.

It's unsoiled and unstained.

The manger, the hay has been brushed out and is laying neatly.

We've taken away any dirt and any humanity from it, and we've made it beautiful.

And I like that.

I like nativities.

They remind me of the point of the Christmas season.

But I think we've made them so pretty and so ornate that they've lost their humanity.

The grit, the realness behind the actual story.

We've made them TV-ready almost, you know?

But the reality is there was a lot of grit and a lot of humanity in this story.

And that grit and that humanity brought me an immense amount of comfort during my difficult season.

So, I just want to pull back the curtain from the beautiful nativity we see and just maybe talk about the humanity behind it and the comfort we can get from that.

So, I always grew up reading the Christmas story from Luke chapter 2.

Luke chapter 2 talks about the birth of Christ.

And there are sections of this chapter that I memorized as a child, and I would recite them in Sunday school or whatever.

But nobody really read the very be