Home for the holidays

I'm home for the holidays this year, and yet it's been a painful, lonely time. It always is for me when I'm with family, but this year especially. These are people I'm related to, yet they're complete strangers. We spend time in front of a TV to avoid talking.

My parents moved to Florida after my freshman year of college, and then moved again from central Florida to Jacksonville, where they now live. When I come "home," I have no ties to the people or the place, and wouldn't come to Jacksonville, or Florida at all, if it weren't for my family.

I didn't get along well with my stepmom when I was growing up. I still struggle with anger, frustration, and the loss of a relationship I often wish we could have had. My stepmom (called Mom from here on out) had five miscarriages, and didn't have kids until I was ten. As a result, she overcompensated and smothered one of my brothers, and there has always been a rift between he and I. We've been pitted against each other and there's a wall between us that I have no idea how to cross, even though I sense there are times when we'd both like to find common ground. Instead, a heavy silence and awkwardness rests between us. My youngest brother and I get along well in person, though even between us I've felt tension this trip. I won't lie, some of it's been me. I'm wound tight these days and have anger toward something, I don't know what.

I'm 31, my brothers are 21 and 18, and yet we slip into the same roles we did as kids. I hear this is true of most families, whether the siblings are kids, teens, or are in their 30s, 40s, or 50s. How do we redefine roles, begin to see each other again through fresh eyes?

Yet I also know there are millions of people who would love to be with their families this year and can't. A blogging friend of mine writes posts about the war in Iraq. A girl I went out with once sent me an email to write our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether we're for the war or against it, we all agree that being miles away from home at Christmastime can be lonely and hard, let alone when we find ourselves in another country, and one where people are shooting at us.

Another friend talked to me about Advent, about how Christmas should remind us of an absence, yet this runs counter to our cultural impulses. This year more than others, I've gotten stressed buying gifts for family and friends, have hated the traffic in the city, and have wondered what Christmas is about.

And yet there remains a deep longing for peace, peace in the sense of Shalom, peace between each other (my family), peace within ourselves (freedom from tension, anxiety, anger, despair), peace in our communities (no more flipping the bird), and peace with God and the sense that God is present and that things really were meant for good.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've wished that Christmas would come crashing down, that we'd have to start over, more simply yet more peacefully. I've found myself sitting in church lately longing and hoping that Jesus is someone who lived in history, that he was who he said he was, and that this truth has power in my life and in every life on this planet. I would love to forego the giving and receiving of gifts if it meant that I could find what I was looking for (and feeling like I was still missing) when I opened presents under the tree. I would love to forego a Christmas meal if it meant feeling full of hope, joy, and peaceful relationships. I would love to forego a holiday from work if it meant that the rest of the year I was part of something revolutionary and satisfying. And I would forego another Christmas pageant, musical, Santa Claus suit, or Salvation army can if I could see God walking among us.

More than anything else, this is what I want for Christmas.