{"id":149,"date":"2014-12-03T07:57:57","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T13:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/?p=149"},"modified":"2020-09-05T04:20:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T09:20:13","slug":"rev-ed-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/rev-ed-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Rev. Ed Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home For Christmas: When “Not Going” Is Healthier Than “Going.”<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t be home for Christmas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those probably weren\u2019t the exact words said.\u00a0 It has been twenty years. But the sentiment was just that. \u00a0I won\u2019t be home for Christmas.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t the usual reason to miss this important Western, semi-religious if misappropriated holiday: the job or geographic limitations. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t in rehab or the hospital or jail or any other institution that reserved the right to restrict my movements. \u00a0I certainly wasn\u2019t dead.<\/p>\n

But Christmas was. \u00a0I had come to the realization that Christmas as I had known it\u2014or really as I wished it had been\u2014was dead.\u00a0 Probably not recently, but I had just become aware of its passing.<\/p>\n

Our family had made a go of it. With some great success over 45 years, even in my own 26 years\u2019 worth of family Christmas memories, we had made a respectable showing. But there was no sense in pretending anymore. \u00a0In fact, it was killing me to do so, emotionally and spiritually. The death of Christmas was much less horrific than the psychological beating of the fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

Some think, and will think, it was just the spoiled, attention-seeking antics of the baby of the family. There is room for that. Misbehavior finds its rationalization and hides the sad truth from us often. Perhaps more sadly, my insight hasn\u2019t enhanced over the 20 years since, not much.\u00a0 I still make the excuse I made then.\u00a0 I have to be okay with that, even if it was or wasn\u2019t okay.<\/p>\n

My brother\u2019s rampant alcoholism, his untreated mood disorder, and some very evident disordering of his personality had gone unchecked for as long as I could remember. And it was all so inconsistent, so haphazard, that when you had a \u201cgood day\u201d with him (by that standard) it was at best like hugging a Faberg\u00e9.\u00a0 It was only a matter of time.\u00a0 Sometimes it made sense just to push the envelope and get it over with, take some sort of control. \u201cYou will go off when I say you go off; your outburst will only be at the time of\u00a0my\u00a0choosing.\u201d Resisting it, mentioning it, these were futile and treasonous and selfish.<\/p>\n

I was early in the process of dealing with this variety of family dysfunction, which to some counselors would be garden-variety dependence\/ co-dependence.\u00a0 The only thing I knew was that the next step beyond awareness was preventing further harm to myself.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t figured out how to be one in a room of seven to ten people\u2014still the \u201cnew kid on the block\u201d in terms of family history\u2014who said \u201cthis stops now\u201d and made sure that it did.<\/p>\n

So I avoided. I stayed away. It didn\u2019t feel good but it was better than the awfulness of unchecked inappropriate behavior, the charade of \u201ceverything\u2019s fine,\u201d and the trauma of \u201cif you can\u2019t tolerate this, there must be something wrong with\u00a0you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t miss anymore holidays after that. The family showdown I fantasized didn\u2019t materialize in any way or form like what I probably envisioned. There isn\u2019t really a \u201chere is the awesome obvious and tangible resultant event that made a crappy experience worth it.\u201d\u00a0 But it was a necessary gift to myself, as ill-advised and unprofitable as some might see it.\u00a0 It was important to self-differentiate.\u00a0 But I would be lying if I said that it felt like a victory or an accomplishment to be proud of at the time.<\/p>\n

Today I still regard skipping Christmas it as something necessary\u2014not a necessary evil so much, but a necessary muddle of tedium that represented a break from \u201cnot-so-healthy\u201d to \u201ca little bit better.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m tempted to make it sound more rewarding, because ultimately it is, just to persuade you more convincingly. I realize though that probably isn\u2019t any of my business.<\/p>\n

Still, I think it\u2019s healthy to separate from \u201cwhat-harms-you-more-than-it-helps-you\u201d even though it\u2019s all you know. It\u2019s all you know and you have to stutter-step into something you know nothing about and do it clumsily and haltingly. Like learning a new activity, like a dance, or a language, or to do something completely foreign to you, perhaps rock climbing or kayaking, you have to decide to do it and start that new trail. Often, you will want to go back to the road more familiar. Under stress, you\u00a0will\u00a0go back and do what was natural. A heavy-handed boxer with one-punch knockout power necessarily begins to learn to box more Ali-style, to stick and move, lest he die in the ring. Knowing this is saving himself from more brain damage, that boxer will often revert to \u201cstand and slug\u201d when feeling the power shot and the fear of nearly being knocked out.\u00a0 Humans go back to what is conditioned under stress, unless and until the new way of coping is the conditioning and no longer the cognitive.<\/p>\n

Over time, I kept going to family gatherings and quit insisting on being there only when \u201che\u201d wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I can tell you, it\u2019s harder without the obvious and immediate reward of some happily-ever-after result. Someone will have to remind you of the \u201cpie in the sky\u201d you are reaching for, because alone you are apt to lose sight and faith in what you are doing.\u00a0 Do it anyway.<\/p>\n

Whatever your \u201cdon\u2019t go home for Christmas\u201d is, do it just once for the right reason, in the right season. No one will like it, not even you, probably. There really isn\u2019t any other way to do the right thing that I can think of.<\/p>\n

 
\n

<\/div><\/p>\n
The Rev. Ed Bird<\/strong> is the Assistant Rector of St. Mary\u2019s Episcopal Church in Park Ridge, IL. He holds a Master\u2019s degree in Social Work. He received his Master\u2019s of Divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary and his Diploma of Anglican Studies from Seabury-Western. He was ordained to the priesthood in September 2012. He and his fabulous wife, Beth, were married in April 2012.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home For Christmas: When “Not Going” Is Healthier Than “Going.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[6,100,38,30,63,27],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-family","tag-holidays","tag-letting-go","tag-self-improvement","tag-stress"],"yoast_head":"\nRev. 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