M. Suzanne Terry

Linking up today with Tara Owens’s synchroblog on Coming Home.

Christmas means going home to me.  I always go home (to my parents’ house) for Christmas Day, and that starts a week of celebration for me.  It’s the end of the rush – the end of the preparation.  It’s time for celebration.

Going home is not always easy.  I don’t have a lot in common with my family, other than bloodlines and Jesus, and we approach Jesus differently.   Their Christmas ends December 26, when mine has just begun.  I’m also somewhat of an anomaly because I’m 38 and have never been married.  My parents have been married since they were 19 and 23.  My younger sister and brother-in-law are celebrating their fifth anniversary this year.  My aunt is widowed, but in order to be widowed, you have to have been married (twice, in her case).  I think they don’t know what to do with me.  I think they don’t understand (I don’t really understand either, but that’s another post for another time).

So going home is often lonely.  It’s the loneliness where you’re surrounded by people who love you but you still feel like the other – the one on the outside, peering into the foggy window to the beautiful scene that you can’t quite reach and don’t quite know how to fit into (or even if you’re supposed to fit at all).

But being away from home on Christmas is worse. To be lonely and also alone is bad.  One year, north Texas had a freak snowstorm around Christmas.  But it was December 24, and I was not going to let it deter me.  Then, when I called my mom to let her know that I was on my way, car fully packed and fueled, coffee in hand, she told me that conditions were so bad that their road had been closed and that I shouldn’t come.  It wasn’t safe.  She tried to soften it by saying that Tammy and Matt were stuck in Oklahoma to let me know that I wasn’t the only one missing, but it didn’t soften it.  They were stuck, but they were together.  I had no together.

So I spent Christmas Eve how any responsible, mature Christian would – with baked goods, a bottle of wine, DVDs of Lost, and my sad feelings.  My friend Maranatha invited me over for the evening, but that was after the second glass, so I wasn’t getting back in the car.

The next morning, however, she and her family wouldn’t take no for an answer.  Her two sisters and her mother both called to inquire if I was on my way.  I was coming for Christmas brunch if they had to come get me themselves.  They fed me, plied me with coffee, and somehow managed to have a gift for me, which was totally unexpected, so that I would really feel a part of the whole celebration.  They let me be sad when it got overwhelming.

I love those people.  It was the next best thing to going home.  They still gave me Christmas Day with my family – just a different family.

A couple of days later, the roads were clear, and I was able to go to my parents’ house.  I ended up driving right behind Tammy and Matt the last five miles of the trip, so we timed it perfectly. Everything was back to the way we meant it to be – just a few days later.

I am lucky.  I am blessed.  I am happy (most of the time).  I am pleased with my life (again, most of the time).  I am whatever-adjective-you-prefer-for-the-relatively-charmed-life-I-lead.

However…

I yearn to move from “going home” to “coming home.”  I have spent the last week musing about what the difference is, and I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.  What I’ve come up with so far is that I don’t want to have to leave the little pocket of existence that I think of as my life to go home.  I want home to be a part of life – a place I come to – a place I find not only my family and the people who mean home to me but I also find myself.

This will be the first year that I’m with a church that observes the liturgical year.  This will be the first year that I am not doing Advent and Epiphany and Lent alone (or as the weird girl who sporadically appears at Vespers, shifty-eyed and guilty-faced, like she’s cheating on her church).  They’re very difficult to do alone.  Doing it alone is not doing it right (and we all know how I like to be The One Who Does It Right).  I hope that this helps me see home as a place I come to rather than a place to which I go.

Speaking of Coming Home, Tara Owens is offering an online Advent course.  It runs December 1-January 11.  If you are looking for your season to be different, too, sign up!