My loneliest Christmas.

Christmas 1996 was my loneliest Christmas.
Vicki and I lived in Sydney, Australia for two years - from 1995-1997.
It was THE shaping experience of our marriage and ministry.

But, thanks to a trip to a buffet, (Sizzler for my aussie friends), I came down with horrible food poisoning. It wasn't so much the food that made me sick - it was what someone had left on the food if you get my drift.

So a couple days before Christmas I started releasing the contents of my stomach to the toilet. For days it went on until I was quite dehydrated. Christmas fell in the middle of this experience and I found myself lying alone on the bathroom floor on hot and sunny Australian Christmas day. I ventured out briefly to visit dear friends who became family to us, but the day was essentially spent alone. There were moments my wife came in to feed me water from a spoon. Thanks honey.

I have always enjoyed having family and friends around me. I have been blessed to be surrounded or connected in meaningful ways with people I love in special times. But that Christmas, in 1996, was my loneliest Christmas.

As I prepare for this Sunday's teaching on the hope of "God with us" within the Christmas story - I am reminded that for some people Christmas is not the "most wonderful time of the year."

It has been almost ten Christmas' since that loneliest Christmas and I am hopeful that maybe in some way - we may all experience the "God with us" and find that even as we sit alone in a movie theatre, or lay aching on a bathroom floor, or even find ourselves alone in a crowd - we might recognize that we aren't as alone as we may think or feel.

ho ho hidey high ho,
sd