I couldn’t sleep that night. The pieces were all coming together in my mind, and reality– soul-crushing, sordid reality-–was dawning alongside the sun. My husband was having an affair. Hours later, the worst was confirmed. And it was so much worse than I could have imagined. Fourteen years of unfaithfulness came to light.

And all of this happened during the Christmas season.

The juxtaposition of a season full of cheer and twinkling lights and my own utter darkness and despair was almost palpable. 

I remember so little about that first week. But I have my journal full of broken thoughts and tear stained pages and here is what I find there: I was clinging for dear life to Jesus, my God WITH ME. 

He is a God near, and not far away. 

Jesus was not born in a state of the art hospital to parents who had been married for an appropriate number of years. He was born in a stable. He was laid in a feeding trough.

Have you ever considered why He would choose such a setting to step into humanity?

I remember taking so much comfort in the humble and raw incarnation of Jesus that year.
I needed a God who was willing to be born in a borrowed barn; who appeared first to outcasts and nobodies. I didn’t need a God with a shiny crown born into society’s most put-together family. I rested myself in my God who was born into scandal and misunderstanding. Because that was where I was too–broken, cast down, humiliated.

There was nothing twinkly about my life. It was an ash heap. And that year I learned the wonder of Jesus, God made flesh. Our Emmanuel, God WITH us.

With us—in broken places and messy controversy. He was not afraid to step into all of it.

He is near, friends. So near.

And it seems, when we are brought very low, we meet Him in ways we never could have in clean and shiny spaces. He is with us–WITH us in the pit, in the scandal, in the brokenness. He’s not put off by any of it–in fact, it seems to have a very special place in His heart.

He chose such a place to put on flesh and dwell amongst us.
Hallelujah, what a Savior!