Losing (and finding) faith under the lights of the tree

My son, Nelson, came in a time of wild free fall.

I fed him and soothed him and quieted him in the lights of a Christmas tree, in the weeks after my mother began treatment for her second round of cancer. She was 57. We had put the tree up with little fanfare, a grief everywhere, but it would be the first Christmas we shared with him - the child we thought we’d never have, after miscarrying twins. We would celebrate despite the fear.

When I awoke each night to warm a bottle, I found I could no longer settle into bed with my newborn tucked in beside me. Instead, I fished out the cord to the Christmas tree and plugged it in, the only light on in the living room. I settled into the rocker and curled my baby into my arms, my feet under an afghan. And to quiet him - and myself - I sang.

Softly, barely heard above the rustle of fleece against skin, I sang. And even though I couldn't carry a tune – was legendary in fact for not doing so – I sang Silent Night again and again and again in the reds and greens and blues of that Christmas tree. And my baby boy never minded that the song ended, only to start again.

That December, because I wanted to, felt I needed to, I fed our child every night under the tree lights, while my husband slept.

It became a worship of sorts. A quiet and fierce worship of my baby, his nose and face and fingers and ears, all smooth and small, easy to kiss. This child, this miracle. I held the sacredness of him each night in my lap, so unbelievable - the enormity of this new life here, anchored by the smallest set of arms and legs.

But my nights came in sharp contrast to my days.

While I fed and bathed my baby, watching him grow in increments, from sitting to standing, I faced the loss of my mother in equal and opposite increments. She went from walking to a wheelchair, from feeding others to being fed, from dressing herself to having me pull a shirt over her head and down, over her scarred chest.

As I became a mother, I lost my own.

And, in the contrast, I was stuck in a wild free fall of a woman who didn’t know if she had faith or not. I had never wondered about God before; I guess I believed in the way one was supposed to. That there was a heaven, and His name spoken at weddings and funerals. My belief was at arm’s length, though, and I’d never worried much about it.

Until I was faced with those nights under the tree. When I held a miracle - and lost one, too.

I took turns believing. When I held my baby boy and saw his smile and felt his soft little head, I believed with everything I had. I thanked God that he’d granted me this, all of this. I filled with gratitude, teary, praying for another day just the same.

And then I would visit my childhood home, and there, where my mother needed me in the same ways, I would fall, crushed under the weight of having no faith at all. How could God let this happen?

It made me a mother with no limits, no thresholds. I loved and grieved to extremes. Some days I would allow everything, buying toys and sweets for the boys. It was like granting us a stay of execution. In the time it took to buy, open, assemble and dismantle a train set, we were fine, normal, safe, good. I poured myself into those outings, those days in the mall struggling with a toddler and a baby, tired and spent. And - for all the world - normal.

The next minute, I would thunder through the house, rounding up toys and packing a bag for charity. Furious with all the noise and plastic and clutter. Furious that my mother was dying. All we needed was family, health and time. If only I could have bought those in huge quantities, too.

In the end, no matter what I did or what I bought, I found that my faith did not come, yet it did not go. It simply stood its ground each night under those Christmas tree lights. I would let the sorrow of the day come, and then I would sing All is calm, all is bright, into the night.

And I would rock, sometimes spending an hour or more there, holding him, rocking him, letting him sleep against my heart, even though I needed my own sleep so badly.

Because I needed something else more: For my little boy to rebuild what had been lost that day.

💚

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