7 PM - Tuesday, December 22
BLUE CHRISTMAS SERVICE
Join via ZOOM
Meeting ID: 943 6991 5184 Passcode: 871872
BY PHONE:
+1.346.248.7799 (Houston)
+1.253.2158782 (Tacoma)
I first heard of Blue Christmas in seminary 25 years ago.
It was about the same time that I attended my first Liturgy for Healing Service.
For some reason I have been asked to lead dozens of Healing liturgies throughout the years. For other reasons I don’t fully understand, I have never had a congregation respond to my encouragement to hold a Blue Christmas Worship Service in December.
Maybe we’re just TOO BUSY. And we don’t need one more item crowding our already overcrowded Things To Do List.
Maybe GRIEF and LOSS and family dysfunction are things we just can’t acknowledge and deal with in the midst of all the perpetual Holiday demands.
Maybe the themes of SUFFERING and HEALING don’t correspond well with our conventional understandings of the Christmas Story.
Or maybe. Just maybe ...
We don’t know, as churches, how to support, rather than marginalize those who are struggling with profound grief, post traumatic distress, and/or substance abuse and mental health challenges.
Maybe. Just maybe ...
The winter months deliver so many burdens upon the already overburdened shoulders of clergy and other church workers, that acknowledging our own distress would make it impossible to manage all of the very many, many December demands from our congregations.
In truth, that’s why I’ve never led a Blue Christmas Healing LIturgy.
Even though I’ve longed to for at least 25 years. I’ve managed to attend a few. But never with people I love, live with, and know well.
In truth, as a Pastor, I have handled December all wrong for almost all of my professional life.
Sure, like so very many others, I get caught up in the Celebration Treadmill of doing, doing, doing … and finding less and less time to tend to my being, being, being.
But also, in truth, I have been grieving profoundly, not just in December. But. Mostly in December.
And I haven’t stopped, in December, to tend to my wounds, like I have learned to do in most of the other eleven months.
And the more aware I become of this dilemma, the more I also realize,
I am by no means alone.
December can be a tortuous month for many INSIDE our congregations. And many OUTSIDE of our congregations. And so very many in our PULPITS and organ lofts and church offices and Sunday School rooms too.
In December, the weight of my cumulative struggles in life seem to press even more poignantly on my solar plexus. Much more simply,
I find it harder to relax and breathe.
Harder to calm myself. Harder to stay silent and keep silent so I can hear God speak in the midst of so much holiday noise. Harder to keep the tears from falling as I wonder how I can possible get everything done?
Well. I can’t ... I just can't. And. I likely don't need to.
See, as I unpack all of these memory boxes we prefer to call “Christmas Storage,” I hold ornaments and decorations that are reminders, not only of the “tidings of comfort and joy,” but also painful reminders of why it so often feels, in December, like I am trapped “In the Bleak Midwinter”:
ANXIETY & DEPRESSION: I graduated with a major in Psychology at Texas A&M in 1985, mostly to help me diagnose the depression, anxiety and profound loneliness I had been battling, at least since Middle School. I wound up with two more graduate degrees in counseling from Northern Illinois University as I continued to search for answers.
WORK-A-HOLISM: For almost a decade I worked at least two jobs at a time while also completing those degrees with honors. The stress of such a horrendous schedule was severe, but being so busy helped keep my profound pain from reaching full conscious awareness.
CHILDHOOD TRAUMA: My gift as a therapist was with children in abusive homes and adults, mostly women, who were survivors of childhood abuse. But my gift as a diagnostician also forced me to uncover my own trauma in a preschool daycare setting while my parents were teaching.
PROLONGED DIVORCE: In 1991 my family officially fell apart. The divorce wasn’t final until 1993, but the damage had been done and the separation started two years earlier.
ALCOHOLISM: My ex-wife, nine others in our extended family, and eventually my daughter, all battled with substance abuse for decades. But before 1993, nobody in the family talked openly about the disease or the family struggles to cope with the disease. Al-Anon became my primary lifeline for healing for almost a decade.
CUSTODY BATTLE: The struggle for custody over our daughter’s welfare really lasted from 1991, when she was two, until 2007, when she graduated from high school at age eighteen. Two homes with markedly different value systems took their toll on her. One parent overreacted to everything with panic and blame. The other parent needed that drama to pay enough attention to her many cries for help. Also, the way our custody agreement was worded and interpreted, I never, in those 16 years got to share a Christmas Eve service with my daughter.
UNDIAGNOSED DIAGNOSES: In addition to Substance Abuse, Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, as well as Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders all have played a part in our Family System. Most went undiagnosed for decades, and untreated even longer.
CHURCHES as FAMILY SYSTEMS: Only in recent years have I begun to comprehend how much my family of origin mirrored the values of the traditional church when it comes to all of the issues above. Our family, when I was growing up, stayed silent about loss, trauma, and healing. So did our church family. Through decades of counseling, therapy, support group participation, and even three weeks of inpatient day treatment, I’ve learned how to help reshape our family response to substance abuse, mental health, and grief. But I have been fairly impotent in helping the congregations I lead address mental health and related issues with much more compassion and care.
NO. Not one memory box has any of these labels on it. But every box carries a reminder of one or more of these burdens that our family has gradually learned to overcome over the years, in just about every other month, except December.
Thankfully, I am now working with two congregations dedicated to helping people find ways to Belong … especially those who often feel sidelined or overlooked or misunderstood or maligned or rejected or cast out.
Thankfully, I am now working with two congregations that encourage me to ponder the homelessness of Mary and Joseph. Their immigration status. Their hunger and food insecurity. Their refugee status and income insecurity. The fear of authorities who are commissioned to kill their son on sight. Because of his ethnic designation, if not technically the color of his skin. Because of the threat his very presence brought to those in authority.
Thankfully, I am now working with two congregations dedicated to the very principles that make a Blue Christmas Liturgy of Healing, not only possible. But really. Very necessary.
Then. Covid hit our house at the end of November.
Our son tested positive. And we were quarantined for two weeks. Plans changed, not only considerably, but entirely. Blue Christmas was shoved to the background as a different kind of health concern became paramount.
We were indeed fortunate. His slight symptoms were long gone by the time we got his test results. Repeated tests confirmed that nobody else in the family contracted this very contagious virus.
But things have just settled back to kind of normal in the last two or three days.
And I should cancel it. It seems wise to cancel it. But I can’t. I just can't ... or so I'm told ...
God seems to be saying, “Todd, you have postponed this for a quarter of a century. It doesn’t need to be big and glorious and well planned and perfectly structured. It needs to be HUMBLE and VULNERABLE. And you are asking for help. Not offering help.
“So offer a service, Todd. And ask for help. And watch what God does with EIGHT or TEN or TWELVE people. Who even a week ago weren’t planning on doing this during the week of Christmas.
“Because you needed it for over 20 years, Todd. And you still do.
"And I promise,” God seems to say, “It will bless at least one other person too.”
So. At the last minute. I am asking for your help. Just to read a passage. And prepare a 30 second response to that passage.
I used to do this all the time in December. Wait until the last minute to ask for help. And I would feel so stressed by it.
This year, I know. God is inviting me to ask only a few people ... those people I love and respect profoundly. And at least 10 will say yes.
Because this isn’t really a polished and professional service. This is an experiment. In allowing the Holy Spirit to heal. Those of us. For whom December is often more about burdens than blessings.
So pray about it, if the Spirit moves you. And I will rejoice if I see you next Tuesday, December 22 at 7 PM.
But hey, if you can, let me know before then that you are Zooming with us.
E-mail me at jtkbruning@gmail.com ... or text me if you have the number ... or find me on Facebook. I'd love to hear about your Blue Christmas journey too.
Blessings. And. Thank you.