I Believe That We Will Win

This Christmas morning is peacefully surreal alongside a strong sense that something's about to burst.  Like a sunrise, Light about to consume all the shadowy dim.  I'm Christmas-morning excited to watch my family wake with wonder.  I'm filled with life-worry.   I'm wide awake, teeming with anticipation about what's just-around-the-corner in the next season of this gift of a life.  I'm tired and can't sleep.  I'm deeply present in our home, comfortable.  I'm distracted, pushing back the could-haves and should-dos, shushing them quiet.

Everything accelerates just before it slows.  Like Christmas and the New Year.  It's frantic, giddy, full with lists and lights and then it's quickly quiet.  Like January mugs the magic of December.  And we box up the glittery happy, for another season.

Can we hold onto this just a bit longer?  The friends for dinner even when it's inconvenient, the small significant talks with the kids before bed even when it's past time, the waiting hopefully expectant?  We intend to keep it - the happy - the candles and the Silent Nights.  Yet the blistering ice rain still blows in, winter feels like forever, we can't believe summer is almost gone, and where has the time gone?  They'll be setting up for Christmas soon, we say.

My kids make fun of me for my ignorance of their music.  I didn't know about Ju-Ju or his Beat.  However, they do listen to some lyrics with deep truth.  This, from the artist, KB,

Hold the torch up high in the thick dark
The dream works no matter how bad the pics are
Cause I see how bad the globe is
But they don't know how bad our hope is
They don't know how bad we want this
It ain't where we at boy it's where we're going!

Tell the paraplegic that he gon' dance
Tell breast cancer that she won't win
Tell racism that he gon' end
What he doesn't heal now... he gon' then
Let's go!

I believe that we will win...

I do believe that we will win because I've found a Hope deeper than my troubles, like grace waves that wash away the trampled sandscape of life - a smooth canvas for another year, unwritten.

Author Ann Voskamp writes, "The world will be still tonight.  There will be lingering.  Longing.  We will long for this wonder to all go on.  One Christmas candle will flame in the quiet.  This cannot fade - none of this can ever fade.  'For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given (Isaiah 9:6).  God is with us.  God stays with us.  The Christmas candle burns hot, give its Light, gives its Light - and the world lights up, and Christmas goes on forever now." 

And this is how it's kept, how we're kept, all believing that we will win.  Our Hope greater than our fears.