I think I’ll always remember it.
The winter of 1940 was not particularly hope-filled for many homes. The knowledge of faraway bombings felt like faint echoes of encroaching pain.
War was just like its name. An indication of feisty combat, a sign of disunity, a warning flame of trouble.
Of course, for me, a farm boy out under the blue dome of a Nebraskan sky, things could seem outwardly calm enough. We never witnessed the glinting sides of a bomber soaring over our heads, or the throat-gripping fear of being targeted by the next sniper hiding on the street. But the trials of others created heavy, scraping chalk marks on the dusty blackboard of our lives. We were over a decade away from the Depression turning point, but its results still left ruts like a wagon trail over the dry ground of history. Our feet and feelings constantly stumbled across the freshly laid tracks of reality, and I knew that this Christmas was not just different for those across the ocean …it was different for me too.
A table laden with dishes too many to count? Those delightfully stacked cookies, pies and cakes …they were the stuff of artist’s imaginations as far as I knew. I hadn’t even been alive for the downswing of the economy and yet I lived and breathed its affects ever since I was born.
And now this …something we didn’t need. Something we never dreamed. War tossing our worn world weeping onto the next wave of work and worry.
Brushing a few tears away I tried to pull back my shoulders the way Dad always did when getting himself together for a big job on the farm. I leaned against the side of the shed while quietly dragging myself towards the back of the building. No one could see me there and I’d have more privacy for these painful musings. True, they hurt, but sometimes hurt can heal. Like a surgeon intent on fixing an aching limb, I too, proceeded on my mental journeys.
What were stacks of food anyway? Useless trappings of celebratory-ness that never quite satisfied? I silently scoffed a little at the idea–though I knew this was just a cover-up for a longing in my heart. It wasn’t that we never had nice food. It’s just that there aways seemed to be a starving scantiness about the preparation of it. A feeling that then affected the enjoyment like a morose idea of further deprivation waiting just around the corner. However, similar to that well-worn idea–that if you don’t see it, you won’t long for it–I had seen, and I wished. Wished for more.
And I cried for a world at peace with its neighbor. Cried for a life no longer hampered by desperate need. Cried for …well, cried for one lonely heart out back of the shed on our family’s farm.
Cried for what could have been …and wasn’t.
Was it all foolishness? I asked myself. Was I just selfish and discontent? I knew …being human, that discontent was certainly mingled within my feelings like the bitter taste of that bad cucumber I had tried harvesting after the frost settled in. Dad had laughed at my face when I tried eating it. I had laughed too. It was funny. But bitterness like this was heavier than a bad-tasting cucumber.
Annoyed at myself, I gazed at the snowy landscape through the blur of tears. I could feel the chilly weather making the vestige of a frozen cherry on my nose. I needed to go in and soon. It wouldn’t do to catch cold on Christmas.
Christmas. Tonight. Tonight, we’d sing carols around the spindly fir tree Dad and I had brought in a few days ago from a back hill on the farm. Tonight, we’d sip dried mint tea and read the Christmas story from the Bible. Tonight, we would receive the few gifts that waited beneath those spindly branches.
For a moment, I empathized with that thin, rather scrawny tree. It felt like the image of my heart. A little starved, a bit like a pane-less window where the wind and rain blows through, and decorated with feeble tufts of spindly pine needles–soft looking, but sharp.
It made me laugh a little, creating a cloudy breath before my face. And then I cried again.
Was that all I was? A sour thirteen-year-old? Aged before my time–embittered by war and hardship, unwilling to face reality–wishing it was all different somehow?
I slid down to the frozen earth and cupped my mittened hands over my face. With my whole heart I turned to my Best Friend.
“Heavenly Father, I need You. I’m all twisted and imperfectly positioned right now in my heart. I’m discontented, worried …unwilling to accept the realities of the present. I don’t feel at all like singing tonight or making merry with my family as if all is well. Father, I don’t want life to be like this. I think lots of dishes of food would be so nice, and no thoughts of war in this world would be such a relief.”
My tears continued as I turned to whispering my prayer aloud. “Father, I need You. Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Make me to hear joy and gladness.”
I sat there for some time …letting the crisp colors of sunset begin to melt together into a heartfelt display. Nothing was different really …at first. But a gentle Hand of peace seemed to lay on my heart …a peace that healed. Far better than my surgical attempts to do so on my own, moments earlier.
Just as the sun began to reach the horizon, words came to my mind. It was a Christmas carol I knew. As for the title, my brain wasn’t able to bring it in, but the melody was there.
the weary world …
The weary world …what was it? Certainly, this world was weary. Tired. Worn by war. Worn by hardship. Worn by pain.
“Father, please help me to remember it.” I prayed. What was the next part? What happened to that weary world spoken of by the carol?
The weary world …I paused, hoping the rest would follow in my mind.
And then, just as a cloud passed before the glory of the sun, I remembered.
The weary world …rejoices
Shivers ran up my arms as I recalled the rest.
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Yes.
Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes. “Father, thank-you. Please keep changing my heart.”
After a few more moments with the song echoing in my mind, I stood up, turning to the house.
I looked towards the glowing doorway and noticed it was open. A lump grew in my throat. Silhouetted against the light was my family.
Waiting. Watching.
They had known.
And now I knew.
Truly, weary though we were …we rejoiced.
O holy night the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
O hear the angel voices
O night divine
O night when Christ was born
O night O holy night
O night divine
– from the carol “O Holy Night”, Adolphe Charles Adam, John Sullivan Dwight, Placide Cappeau
“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Luke 2:14
