GABRIELA YARELIZ

“It’s ok not to feel ‘festive’ this year. All your emotions are welcome and darling, the feeling is the healing. Wishing you all the space and grace to feel as you do, remembering that no feeling is permanent. Allow it to move through you, and it might just make space for something fresh and new.” Suzy Reading

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was going to write about the New York Rangers’ toxic display of stupidity on ice yesterday, but Steve Valiquette said it all. (We love an honest Steve!) So we are getting really personal today. Recently, there was a moment in worship that took me back. The worship leader reminded the church of what it’s like to look back on your life and see God’s hand on it. Joke is on him, because even before he spoke this in an interlude toward the end of the song, I had already been in a daze and reflection over my own life. Not going to lie, it made me emotional. My right eye was releasing enough tears for both eyes. (Not sure why my left eye was dry, but it was. Not sure if my husband noticed my one crying eye, but regardless, the waterworks were happening on the other side of him).

They always say the holidays can be difficult. We remember the people who aren’t around the table with us. We feel our brokenness more deeply. Sometimes, the cold and darkness outside mirrors how we feel inside. We compare ideals to what has been lost. We torture ourselves in all kinds of ways. The holidays are equally difficult when you remember horrible things that happened around them (or anything related to family, let’s be real).

Sometimes, the holiday season gets a little dark. For me, it’s like a passing dark cloud. That memory of getting ready for a Christmas Eve party and standing at the top of the stairs in tights and Mary Jane shoes (probably with glitter on my face), and having a revelation that made my entire (tiny) world come crashing down. It was a night that changed everything. Suddenly, the holiday is tied to your loss of childhood, your grief, your abandonment. Everything that strikes you in the darkness that therapy tries to undo years later.

I was moved by the worship song about God’s goodness, because I know for a fact that God has been so good to me. I see His fingerprints everywhere. His arm upholding me and keeping me standing in the middle of every storm. That goodness brings a great deal of emotion out of me. It takes me through a crazy timeline and sequence of unlikely and strange events. It reveals every miracle along the way; every bout of insane courage and grit. Every defiant step forward. Every broken pit stop along the way.

As I heard the song, something happened that usually happens around this time, I am stripped of my clothes, my boots, the sunglasses that shield my expressions, my bravado, and I am that pre-teen girl again standing at the top of the staircase who goes from excited and festive to scared, shattered and wondering what comes next. Sometimes, the feeling washes over me like a wave, but this year, I felt it stick around like a sticky gum on the bottom of my shoe. It was a duality of feelings– the engulfing uncertainty and loss, but also, my 30-something-year-old self standing there in strength and resilience, safe, knowing the story at a later point of the timeline. In true disbelief of the timeline that has brought me here. “He surrounds me with goodness, I have seen it.”

At times, the brokenness of the past makes the wholeness of the present more cherished. It is not taken for granted. I write this as I come out of my own funk– my own seasonal darkness that comes back to haunt, every so often. I mention this to remind you that the darkness is not the end of the story. Maybe you are sitting in your own darkness. Letting the waves of it wash over you. Feel it all. Cry. Remember. Notice the miracles along the way. Don’t stay in one point. Make your way down the timeline.

It’s officially winter. We celebrate Christmas; Jewish friends celebrate Hannukah. Persian friends celebrate Yalda. It is a season where we, at every step of the way, are reminded of the light. Not just the light, but the miracle of light that persists.

Pastor McManus reminded us this past week that “The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Romans 13:12

Chervin (founder of Cymbiotika) wrote: “Yalda means birth. It marks the turning point when the light begins to return, quietly, incrementally, by law. The long night is real. But so is the dawn. Say this with me, ‘The night may be long, but I was born of the fire that outlasts it.‘”

In this time of solstice and of reminding ourselves that the Light of the World has come to dispel darkness forever– when we remind ourselves that the night is over (or close to over, depending on your circumstance), and we put on the armor of light– feel it all. Feel the depth of the darkness that threatens to stay, but then also, turn your face to the light. The light that never lets the darkness last– the light that is inevitable. The light that takes us and lifts us from the depths of pain, loss and fear. The light that illuminates everything it touches. The light that will shine in our hearts and dispel any dark remainder.

Today, I want to remind you that your pain, your real darkness in life, all of it counts. If you are there now, know that dawn is inevitable. If the darkness haunts you from the past, let it serve to remind you that you are not there anymore. Put on the armor of light. The feelings may take you back to the top of the staircase, but you aren’t standing there anymore. It is but a blip in the timeline of eternity. That was you, but now, here you are, singing about His goodness and His everlasting light. Here you are, knowing that you are “born of the fire that outlasts the night.”

This song and this quote– it’s my current mood. Stay with your feelings as long as you need. I finally reached the day where I feel like it has washed over me. Baptism complete. Yalda; birth. I have arrived to the present, and it’s bright.

“Say this with me, ‘The night may be long, but I was born of the fire that outlasts it.‘” Chervin