Growing up in Florida I never had occasion to ice skate, but like many kids in my genre of coolness, I often went to the skating rink. I couldn’t skate backward or couples skate (well, maybe I could have but no one asked me to). Still, I loved skating under the disco lights to the music of bands like Queen, The Bee Gees, and Gloria Gaynor. It made me feel as if I was going places even if it was only in an endless circle.
Decades later, I sometimes still feel like I’m going in an endless circle. Only it doesn’t feel as cool anymore.
This feels especially true in parenting. Loops and loops around the carpool lane; circular conversations that make my head spin; and the ongoing dream-killing of telling my precious children no.
No, and no, and H-E-double hockey sticks no. Circle and repeat. Sometimes I would go to bed feeling dizzy and drained and very much unlike Gloria Gaynor whose anthem “I Will Survive” obviously doesn’t apply to parents of teenagers. It was about as much fun as tripping on my roller skate shoelaces and falling on the seat of my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans knowing that I would be sitting out the couple’s slow skate yet again.
I had not skated in decades until one Christmas several years ago. We took our kids overseas for their first time; landing in London early Christmas day. We attended a beautiful mass that morning at Westminster Cathedral and roamed the city’s cold and quiet streets all afternoon. That evening we went to an open-air Christmas Market in Hyde Park. They had giant paper mâché art, games, rides, roasted chestnuts, yummy-smelling confections, and vendors who sold fake Burberry scarves. It was magical.
They also had ice skating.
I was surprised when my son agreed to ice skate with me. My son, who so often seemed distant, so annoyed with my attempts to cajole conversation, and so frustratingly far away from the easy carefree boy I once knew so well, said he would skate. I could end the story here because I feel certain his willingness to skate with his mama was a Christmas miracle.
Yet, what has stuck with me in the years since, is that the real miracle we give to one another no matter the season is to love others relentlessly and unconditionally despite how difficult it can sometimes be. We all want to believe that love is some magic potion that is euphoric and blissful. We think it means we won’t argue, or run out of money or patience or necessities like toilet paper. We think of perfect white teeth frozen in a smile and gleaming eyes that only see all our best traits. When genuine love, like Jesus, sees it all – our brokenness, our unbelief, our pettiness, and the many ways we’ve turned against one another. He sees it, and like its own endless loop loves us anyway. Only his loop isn’t going nowhere. He sees not only who we are now but who we can be – the fullness of love incarnate; the very essence of a Savior born in a manger.
Skating in the open air, under the jovial lights of London’s Hyde Park wasn’t magic because it was perfect but because it was a wobbly sliver of light amidst the darkness of imperfection. The Christmas season is a chance to offer one another the same kind of hope; the same kind of unrelenting love.
On the ice-skating rink, I was unsure how much space to give my teenager, not because he had never skated before but because apparently at the time I was inadvertently annoying. After a few loops to nowhere on our own, I caught back up to him. “Mom, can you stop lapping me,” he asked half-laughing. There’s nothing I want more I thought. We skated side by side. Finally, going somewhere.
Hi all~ This is one of my favorite Christmas memories and such a great reminder to me of love’s capacity to stretch and bend and circle back to all the reasons that make love worthwhile.
May your own Christmas be an endless loop of hope and love — and awe at that little baby in the manger who made all things possible then and makes all things possible now. ~ Merry Christmas! Love, Lara