You deep desire to be loved
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, they say.
Here - where I am writing this... Here - where you are, reading this; in the beginning, the middle, and the end; in the hope and the hopelessness, in everything that this year has been, and all that your Christmas is shaping up to be,
Magic and wonder.
Miracles, wonder, grace... the extra-ness that happens that you can’t explain and makes no sense, and tingles your spine with the feeling that something more than what you can see and touch and taste and hear and sense is happening here. You can’t quite put your finger on magic... that’s why it is so. Magic, miracles, wonder... they’re all words trying to convey the same sense of something special happening, something beyond what might seem possible with what you have, what you know, and where you are.
Maybe it’s because of the crazy Bible stories you may have been brought up listening to and reading as a child, like the great flood that drowned the earth, the walls of the city of Jericho crashing to the ground, giants being conquered and prophets being honoured. Dreams and visions and sacrifices and prayers and all kinds of weird and wonderful things give the sense that miracles and wonder and magic are grand and spectacular and big and crazy, and to get them, you need grand and spectacular and big and crazy things. Growing up in a Pentecostal, evangelical Church, we had miracle meetings (back then, we wouldn’t have dared call them magic) where we would pray and chant and declare and expect and, quite honestly, work ourselves up into a frenzy we deemed too holy for God to ignore. Miracles became something that happened only to the righteous and the blessed, to those who sacrificed and were worthy. You must pray and believe and behave, and then maybe, you’ll get a miracle.
But that’s not the Christmas story.
Although we treat it as if it is - we drum it up, making it loom large and heavy, apply so much pressure to it, trying to make it how we think it should be, how we’ve been told it must be, just right and perfect. Often, the pressure we put on Christmas to be what we want it to be is exactly what ruins it, dulls its magic, and makes us too exhausted to enjoy it for what it is, for the wonder that is already here.
Miracles and magic and wonder, they aren’t the big and grand and impossible things we’ve been taught they are. They aren’t just limbs growing in front of your eyes, people jumping out of wheelchairs, mountains falling into the sea, cities being protected or destroyed (whichever you need, I guess), virgin births, and dead men coming alive again. Miracles exist in the ordinary, small things, in the dust and mess and mire of your own life, where you are.
Mary’s story teaches us that.
She carried her child made by her own body for nine long months of stretching and twisting, of questioning and fear and hope; she wrestled and ripped her way through contraction after contraction; she pushed and screamed and tore and bled; she felt the relief of delivery and the rush of love where you cry and laugh at the same time, and you don’t know what to do except to sit in your own blood and hold the life you made; she breastfed and lived on no sleep and had no time to cook dinner…
That’s real magic.
Behind most pleas for a miracle is a deep desire to be seen and known and loved - we want the ‘miracle’ because we think that is what will get us what we want. But you don’t need the big and crazy and spectacular to find the love and healing you’ve been seeking. You just have to open your eyes and heart and see that the miracle is already here, waiting for you to love it back.
LISTEN: Christmas will come and go, like it does every year. The miracle you’re looking for is more like a birth than a one-hit wonder. Relax into it. No white-knuckling. Let it be what it is, and the magic will unfold all on its own.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
From this week’s series, "The Most Wonderful Time", with a subscription, in the App.
