I had a suspicion this was going to be a difficult Christmas season, so I tried to prepare myself for it mentally. Bryan is working long hours, which means I’m working long hours at home with the kids. Last week I was up all night with kids who had a stomach virus, and even had to make a trip to the ER.

By the middle of last week I decided it wasn’t worth the energy to pull out my boxes of Christmas decorations, since we are leaving town soon for the rest of the year. I know the true meaning of Christmas does not lie in a pine tree or colored lights, but it’s hard to get into good cheer when things around me don’t look festive, and we aren’t spending time together as a family shopping or baking or otherwise collaborating on the season.

It’s been the sort of week where I can’t even go downstairs to switch the laundry over without someone destroying something or starting a fight. I lost a contact lens, and my glasses have an old prescription, which makes everything look blurry. All the squinting makes my neck and shoulders tight, and I can’t read any street signs when I’m driving. I feel like staying in bed with the covers over my head, but I can’t do that for long before someone asks me for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I’m feeling depressed, but not the kind of depressed that medication can make better. I think I’m the kind of depressed that gets better when things go my way. I’d like to think that if my circumstances changed I would be able to get out of this slump, but in reality, I know blaming my less than stellar circumstances is not always something I can get away with.

I feel a lot like Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and sometimes I’d like to move to Australia.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:4-7).

In the past this passage has always irritated me – it seemed trite and flippant, as if the author, Paul, has no idea what it’s like to be me. But Pastor Mark made a very compelling argument to the contrary: Paul, the man who was shipwrecked, beaten, and imprisoned, and was actually writing these words from prison, might have some credibility when writing about anxiousness. He was not in a position to be simple nor flippant.

Bryan’s birthday was on Monday, and he got a pink, plastic, Magic Eight Ball style Jesus as a gift. You’re supposed to ask a question, shake the Jesus, then check the triangle on his feet for your answer. Our pink Jesus has answers like, “resist the devil,” “believe,” “pray harder,” and “no chance in hell.”

I think I’ve treated prayer like my Magic Eight Ball Jesus – asking God if he will change my circumstances, then shaking him for the answer. What I realized on Sunday after hearing Pastor Mark’s sermon on Joy in Anxiety, is I lack faith that God will take care of me. I want my kids to get along, I want my husband to be on call, and I want to get a full night’s sleep.

I want my life to be easy.

But Paul says we should rejoice in the Lord always, regardless of whether I am up all night with a puking child. I don’t like this. In fact I hate it. I would much rather Jesus change my circumstances than somehow equip me to deal with them. But the fact of the matter is, Jesus promises a peace I will never understand, in the midst of a circumstance that I cannot change.

This is incomprehensible to me, which I suppose is the point.

So I plow forward into this Christmas season, more focused on the Jesus it represents than the good cheer I think it is supposed to provide. Cookies or no cookies, tree or no tree, it is Jesus who will bring me peace this season.