Yesterday afternoon,while meeting with my Bible study gals, when it was my turn to share my “highs and lows” of the Christmas holiday, I began to unpack and take a good look at my one real low – not going to Mass on Christmas Eve.
In past years, the thought never would have crossed our minds. Our routine was set in stone. After the final preparations were made, we’d clean up the kitchen, shower and then Dave would drive off to pick up what has become our traditional Christmas Eve dinner – Kentucky Fried Chicken. I know KFC seems an unusual holiday meal, but for so many years when Dave and the kids were in different choirs singing at different Masses, the quickest way to get a warm meal was to go through the drive thru and pick up a bucket of chicken and fixings on the way home from the first Mass. Since we don’t eat fried chicken on a regular basis, it was a treat and the tradition stuck. No matter where we lived from Virginia to Hawaii, it was KFC on Christmas Eve.
After our finger lickin’ good dinner we would get dressed and head to Mass where we would join our St Mark’s church family to celebrated Christ’s incarnation. Even after Maggie and Andy had moved out on their own and seemed to only enter churches for weddings, Christmas was a time for their homecoming. It was a time to be welcomed back into the warm arms of a church community that had know them most of their lives. It was my way of positively reinforcing church for them, albeit once a year.
This year, our first year away from St Mark’s, there wasn’t a warm Catholic community waiting to welcome Dave and I, let alone our children. My friends at Peace Lutheran have been lovingly urging me to join them at their services but up until the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I assumed we would attend Mass, just because we always do.
As the time grew closer to the chicken run, Dave asked , “Do you want to go to Mass or not?” Now I’ve known this man long enough to know the tone of his question implied that he was putting the decision totally on my shoulders. Like the kids, he wasn’t feeling any strong reason to take time out of our Christmas Eve to go to Mass. I don’t know if it was because I was tired, or had a weak moment, but I told him that if no one else wanted to go, we could just stay home.
Until that moment, I had been mostly happy, with very little thought about our being in our new home and away from all our traditions and friends and community. Choosing to opt out of God because I didn’t feel a connection in our new parish left me feeling sad and alone for the very first time since our move.
So yesterday, as I shared my story with my friends, I was reminded my one of them that the empty spot I felt where my church experience should have been was something I should remember – to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I wonder now if what I felt was not only my longing for God or God’s longing for me. Just as I missed my time with God on Christmas, God missed spending time with me.
I had passed up an open invitation from the almighty. What a maroon! I certainly won’t let that happen again.