As a child I remember my impression of Christmas
was very different than it is now. Probably like plenty of other kids, I started
out thinking that Christmas was Santa Claus and the reindeer bringing toys to
put under our tree every December. Of course, I was a bit perplexed as to how
Santa got into our apartment given that we had no fireplace, but like a true kid
I figured it was some kind of elf magic to which I wasn't privy. I remember
hearing stories of this fellow named Jesus and how he was born around this time
of the year, but I never really pieced it all together when I was young.
Then my folks started dragging me to church when they figured that they
could lasso me and keep me from swinging from the chandeliers during the sermon.
During this time I learned more about this Jesus fellow and how we all owe him a
lot for something or other, but my attention span in church could have been
measured with an egg timer and the monotonous droning of the Episcopalian rector
and clergy was almost hypnotic. During this time I figured out that Christmas is
actually the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, but I still loved
the presents and focused on them.
Later, after I was confirmed, I
started serving as an acolyte in the 11 A.M. services at St. John's in Laurel.
All of that Jesus stuff finally came together and by this time I had realized
that Santa Claus wasn't real, the reindeer stay way up north and are actually
called caribou, and Christmas was a celebration of Jesus' birth where we give
each other gifts in honor of the gift given to us. Life was good, I doubted
nothing, and Christmas was still a time of anticipation and excitement.
In early- to mid-adolescence my scientific mind started to assert itself
and suddenly I had question upon question about everything. How? Why? Moreover,
I wanted proof. Thanks to the
Merriam-Webster
online dictionary, I have these two definitions...
Main Entry:
1proof 
Pronunciation:
'prüf Function:
noun Etymology: Middle English, alteration of
preove, from Old
French
preuve, from Late Latin
proba, from Latin
probare to
prove -- more at
PROVE
1 a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the
mind of a truth or a fact
b : the process or an instance of
establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other
statements in accordance with principles of reasoning
Main Entry:
1faith Pronunciation:
'fAth Function:
noun Inflected Form(s):
plural faiths /
'fAths, sometimes 'fA[th]z/
Etymology: Middle English
feith, from Old French
feid, foi,
from Latin
fides; akin to Latin
fidere to trust -- more at
BIDE
1 a : allegiance to duty or a person
: LOYALTY
b (1)
: fidelity to one's promises (2)
: sincerity of
intentions
2 a (1)
: belief and trust in and loyalty to God
(2)
: belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
b (1)
: firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2)
:
complete trust
Herein lied my quandary: my mind was demanding proof for
everything I had ever learned, including religion. And, as can be seen from the
definition of faith, one must have a belief in something for which there is no
proof whatsoever. It is this conflict that has defined my spiritual existence
for the past 20+ years and continues to challenge my ideas, my convictions, and
my sense of self.
Proof not being available, I struggled with the idea
somewhat but often put it on the back burner and just pretended that all was
well. I knew that my parents wouldn't understand, so I never really voiced my
feelings and doubts, and thanks to several things out of my control and my
parents' control we stopped going to church during this time in my life. I was
plagued with doubts but was always too scared to really think about it too much
for fear of what I might conclude. In this respect, I guess that I became a
fearful agnostic -- afraid to believe in something that might not be true and
even more afraid to think about what it means for it to be false. This made
Christmas a time when I enjoyed the lights and the music but lost out on the
meaning. In fact, the true gift of Christmas for me was being able to see my
grandparents when they travelled to Laurel for the Christmas-New Year's period.
In college, I had the privilege of knowing a few really good people, one
of whom was a fellow named Richard. Richard was a devout Christian and had a
confidence about his beliefs that that was unshakable and truly inspired awe
from me. I never truly confided my doubts to him as Christianity was a central
part of his life and I didn't want to be distanced from him as a friend due to
my agnosticism, but in retrospect I should have talked to him more than I did
about it. He told me once that it took him seven years to convince himself that
he believed; by that time, I had been doubting my beliefs for at least that long
with no progress at all. I could practically smell the fear on me -- fear to
believe, fear to not believe, fear to even think about it. After all, if it was
true then the way I acted really did matter and if it wasn't true then when I
died it would all be black and nothingness. During this time I lost both of my
grandparents -- my mother's parents (my father's had died before I was born) --
and this led to a series of Christmas seasons that were bleak, barren, and
devoid of all meaning.
Richard was a good influence on me, though. He
never was pushy about his beliefs, he was one of the only true friends I've ever
had, and through knowing him I met a better quality of people around my age than
I had ever known before. In fact, after graduation when he left to work in Texas
and I stayed at Southern Miss to go to graduate school, I started hanging out
with some of his friends I knew and going to the meetings of the religious
organization on campus to which he had belonged, Campus Crusade for Christ. I
couldn't say that I was a true believer, but these were good people --
really good people -- and they had something
in their eyes that I had never seen before. I realize now what it was: peace and
joy. It was during this time that Christmas became almost painful for me; I so
desperately wanted to believe, to have that feeling they had, to recover some
meaning to Christmas in my post-grandparents world, but I was like a blind man
searching for something. Being an egghead, I bought books and read them,
thinking that I could educate myself into having faith, but even with books
sporting titles like
A Scientific Approach to
Christianity I still came up short.
This went on for years. The
pain of losing my grandparents eventually dulled and Christmas became less of a
painful reminder of what I'd lost over the years than it was a holiday for which
I had little reason to celebrate. The presents were still nice -- I enjoyed
giving them as much as getting them -- but Christmas to adults is an experience
that transcends gift-giving and I had not managed to transcend bupkus.
Then along came Julie. She took the emotional burned-out cinder that was
my heart and managed to coax it back to health. We got married shortly after
Christmas in 1998 and I just knew that it was too good to have been a random
thing in my life. This was my first step toward actually having faith in
something or someone other than myself.
The question I haven't answered
yet is whether or not I'm still an agnostic. No, I'm not. I found my faith in a
desperate time under dire circumstances. Around the first week of May in 2003 I
woke up one morning and stretched the wrong way as I was waking up. I was
stretching my legs out and as I arched my back I constricted my abdominal
muscles a bit too harshly. I wound up with an incarcerated hernia which, sparing
everyone the gory details, was bad. I went to the emergency room that night
after I couldn't keep anything down and was diagnosed with the problem. The next
day the surgeon came by and told me that if I didn't have an operation that day
I'd die. So I was moved to a hospital in Monroe that was better able to handle
my surgery and had emergency abdominal surgery for almost four hours, 10:30 P.M.
until 2:15 A.M. I had a 15% chance of not making it, which isn't that much but
is still cause for concern.
Prior to the surgery, I had asked to speak
with the Episcopalian rector in Ruston, a really decent guy by the name of Rev.
Head. I spoke with him, telling him my doubts and confessing sins to him that,
thanks to my agnosticism, had stained my soul for far too long. I remember that
after he left a feeling of calm came over me and I had a clarity of thought that
I have never known before or since. I understood that I might die but I wasn't
afraid anymore. And then it hit me. I believed. I had doubted everything --
myself, other people, my faith or lack thereof -- but when hit with a stressful
situation where I had to cut through the layers of thought and reason and figure
out what I believed, it was there. Faith. I don't know how I got it, I have no
idea when I got it, but the situation with the surgery was extreme enough that
it made me notice that I had it.
Since then, Christmas has become a time
when I'm thankful that I'm alive, that my wife is alive and loves me, and that
my parents are both alive and love me. There's nothing like dealing with the
prospect of death to make one appreciate the simpler things in life, and I was
no exception. I don't mean to be melodramatic about my 15% brush with death, but
this was the first time I had to face my mortality and it changed me. I can't
imagine what it must be like for those poor people who get news like "nothing
can be done" or "10% chance of survival". These are the people who know what
I've been talking about far better than I do. Nevertheless, I now have an
appreciation for many things that I had either taken for granted or never even
noticed. Every day is a gift and Christmas is the time of the year when we are
grateful for the days we have left on this Earth and for the days we have after
that as well.
So, for the second Christmas in a row since I was 13 years
old, I can honestly and with the full meaning of the phrase say
...
Merry
Christmas!
