Exactly What You (Miraculously) Need For Perfect Family Holidays (& “Fix” Impossible Things)

It’s only a few days before Christmas, when I’m standing in the kitchen with a pulse oximeter at the kitchen table, checking the heart rate of our youngest daughter’s single ventricle heart that sometimes breaks into these wild galloping arrhythmias.

The things you can bake, make, or fake for Christmas — can’t fix all the things that aren’t things. 

We do this a couple times a week, check on how fast her brave little half-a-heart is pounding.

But this morning — I kinda wonder, in the final holiday crush of things, if there’s anything to slow down my own heart pounding with all the holiday things that need to still happen, that still need to get done.

The light catches on the Advent candle and something catches in me:

The things you can bake, make, or fake for Christmas — can’t fix all the things that aren’t things. 

The things that you can buy and wrap for under the tree can’t actually wrap your life up with a neat bow. 

There are relationships that are still cracked and bruised. There is still brokenness and dysfunction in places you hoped had healed. There are still failures and loss that are tender to the touch, and there are hearts that are racing with overwhelm … and breaking achingly slow.

Unwrapping the Greatest GiftThe Greatest Gift

And there is snow melting slowly out in the orchard… and a story I once heard seeps into the edges of my heart-racing thoughts, a story of a girl named  Taylor Storch who had headed with her family to Colorado for a little skiing.

Thirteen-year-old Taylor had laughed loud as she skied down the mountain before she had fallen — crashed — down a straight rocky slant of the earth. By nightfall, she was gone, slipped off this earth and Home, and her parents, Tara and Todd, were signing papers to give away Taylor’s still-warm heart.

They ended up giving Taylor’s heart to a woman in Arizona whose heart was failing so weary that she couldn’t get off the couch anymore — a woman named Patricia Winters.

Taylor’s mama had only one request. Taylor’s mama had called Patricia Winters and asked her if she could come hear Taylor’s heart beating inside of Patricia Winter’s chest.

Taylor’s mama flew from Dallas to Phoenix and knocked on Patricia Winters’ door, and Patricia Winters  opened the door and she opened her arms and she welcomed them in. And Taylor’s mama fell into her arms and the two mothers just held each other, Taylor’s heart beating right there next to her weeping Mama’s.

All the thing we desperately wish we could fix in a heart beat this Christmas — God comes to change in a heart beat. Because the newborn babe who comes to the manger — comes to to give us His very own heart.

And then Patricia Winters reached over and handed Taylor’s Mama a stethoscope.

And she laid that stethescope up against Patricia Winters and she could hear it, right there in Patricia as clear as a beckoning bell:

Thrum. Thrum.

Taylor’s mama could hear it loud and long, right there in her ears….

Like a thunder vibrating right through her —

Her daughter’s still-beating heart.

What  Taylor’s Mama really hearing — was the heart of her girl in a different body.

And I look down to check the heart rate of our own little girl and it’s my own heart that slows, profoundly moved and turned around.

The turkey won’t make the holidays, and the lack of cookies won’t break them, and what you didn’t get done or made or bought or cleaned can’t wreck the holidays. You don’t need the perfect gift, the perfect table, the perfect traditions, the perfect capture with the perfect filter for the instagram — to make all the broken things perfect.

All the hurting places this holiday that I am trying to fix with all the things, with gifts and baking and decking and making?

All the thing we desperately wish we could fix in a heart beat this Christmas — God comes to change in a heart beat. Because the newborn babe who comes to the manger — comes to to give us His very own heart.

I can hear my own heart:

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

My own heart’s racing, aching, and failing to make the perfect holiday …

Even when you don’t think you can forgive what’s happened — when it’s actually His heart beating in you, you can forgive in a heart beat.

But that’s the point in the middle of the holidays:

Your heart can’t forgive the words that should never have been said, your heart can’t forgive the remark that was more like a blade and left a mark how many years later. Your heart can’t forgive the side joke, the backhand, the over-the-top family that just gets under your skin.

Your heart can’t forgive. That’s why He gave you His heart.

When God leans in close to all our hurting places here, what God actually hears — is the grace-beating heart of His Son. 

You don’t need any thing to make a holiday. 

Things don’t make our holiday into holy-days — only a new holy heart can.

Only the set-apart holiness of a new heart can make the holidays into holy-days. 

Only a holy, new heart can make holy-days. 

Love Himself comes down this Christmas, so that you get the gift of a new, holy heart: “And I will give you ia new heart, and ia new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26)

And, honestly? 

Even when you don’t think you can forgive what’s happened — when it’s actually His heart beating in you, you can forgive in a heart beat.

For unto us a Son is given — so we can be forgiven, and so we can forgive. 

Things don’t make the holidays — only His holy heart can make these days into holy-days. 

Turns out: You don’t need all the things for the holidays, you simply need one thing — a heart willing to see it: There is still Love and grace for us all beating at the heart of the universe. 

Right where you don’t believe…  is where God can meet you with a miracle. 

I look up from the sink. The Christmas tree is there by the fireplace — and it’s right there, what all the hard relationships, gatherings, families need at Christmas:

The Tree is where God’s grace does heart transplants: God takes our broken hearts —- and gives us His.

Every Christmas Tree testifies to the hope of heart transplants: Christ going to Calvary’s Tree to give us His own heart.

His holy heart is what is at the heart of these holy-days. 

We don’t need all the things, all the list of to-buy things, to-bake things, to-make things  — because we’ve been given the heart of Christ and that is the miracle that we need more than anything, because the miracle of a new heart is what changes everything.

 It’s really true: Right where you don’t believe…  is where God can meet you with a miracle. 

Miracles can happen in a heart beat — when it’s His heart is beating in you.

You never have to feel behind this December, or feel like you’re missing Him this Advent, And His miraculous gift of a new heart!

Our Free, Thank You Christmas Gift for You:

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So here, right now, is your invitation to continue the journey from the creche to the Cross and into abundant life, for the 40 days leading up to Easter: Pilgrimage with Jesus, through the whole of His life, as told in the Gospel of John, and deeply experience the rest of the story of Jesus, experience His signs and wonders, discover the seven I Ams of Jesus and intimately experience the love of Christ.

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