Around this time of year, you can find the main characters of this story at the dollar store, the bakery, the greeting card rack. Often, blonde angels wear white dresses and swan-wings, hoping to dazzle shepherds and cute, fluffy sheep. The wise men pose in formalwear atop regal camels, looking as though they've just stepped off a one-hour flight to Bethlehem, first class. Mary and Joseph kneel stiffly by the bright straw of the manger, on which lies a rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed Jesus, glowing and clean.

    But the writers of the Christmas Story tell us otherwise. The story they recount is full of human and supernatural drama that often isn't done justice by our synthetic Nativity scenes or the holiday hoopla that surrounds them. The Story tells us of so much more—joy blooming in the middle of pain and weariness, like a desert rose.

    The setting is a land and time full of oppression and unrest; the heroes and heroines of the story are the most unexpected possible: not a woman of status, but a teenaged girl in love who didn't have much life experience; not a king, but a simple carpenter who always wanted a happy, normal family. What set their destinies apart in the light of eternity? One thing is for sure—this woman and this man wanted real life more than anything else; they were willing to sacrifice their control, reputation, and "rights" in order to abandon themselves to the story their Creator was weaving. Their personal plans were ruined in a day, and yet they chose to believe in the greatness of another plan they couldn't see mapped out in front of them. "I am the Lord's servant," said Mary to the otherworldly messenger who told her how her life would be turned upside down. "May it be to me as you have said. " (Luke 1:38 NIV)

    Consider just who witnessed the night sky flayed open with light and the voices of uncountable heralds of heaven: not priests, prophets, or leaders, but sheep herders, the most average blue-collar workers imaginable. Why did Almighty God choose them over anyone else that historic night to receive the most dramatic visual revelation in hundreds of years, a sight we can only imagine? Why were they entrusted as the first to hear the Good News in its joy and glory, the first to see the newborn Messiah, the first evangelists? Could it have been their willingness to abandon themselves to the strange path that unfurled before them?

    Just who were those astrologers who recognized the True Mystery in the Star of stars? What drove them to drop everything and leave home to relentlessly seek that True Light for which they'd been waiting their whole lives? And yet, alongside the joy was evil: a jealous king, so controlled by fear that he didn't think twice about shedding the blood of children, much less the Messiah. Why might God have allowed this evil king's rage to send the small, weary family onto unknown desert roads, this time back to the old land of captivity? Did this ruler—slave to his own pride—ever realize, even on his deathbed, that he was sending Freedom itself far away?

    Such unique, flesh-and-blood people are the real-life characters of the true Christmas Story. They all faced opportunities and decisions of a lifetime—whether to jump into the Story's swift tide or to cling to the concrete ground and die of thirst. We are faced with the same choice. But ironically, while we long for good stories—they are what stir us—we don't want to live one ourselves. Why? Because, as every reader knows, there's no story without conflict. We love the adventure, drama, and poignancy, but not necessarily in our own lives; at least, not at the cost. We crave stability, safety, control. Abandon-ment scares us. We fight the unknown; we want to be able to plan. Yet, Scripture makes it clear that God, in His desire for our very best, urges us to abandon ourselves to the Story that He is writing.

    The Author of the Christmas Story skimps on nothing. He risks it all by actually coming to live out the Story He calls us into. A far, far cry from the puppeteer behind the stage who toys at whim with his creation. Though we are quick to recognize Jesus' sacrifice at the cross, His own words reveal the whole of it: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13 NIV). It's one thing to die for another; it's completely something else to live for another. Jesus not only took on the entirety of our sin's terrible weight at the Cross; He also chose to step into our Pandora's box at His birth.

    Somehow, it is the relinquishment and human weariness in the Christmas Story that makes its joy and hope even brighter.

    We all want happiness and warmth during the Christmas season, but life doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes the Advent season isn't the peaceful holiday at home that, no doubt, Joseph and Mary would have enjoyed; sometimes it's a steep, rocky path, full of struggle. Yet, somehow, the exhaustion of our human strength can bring us closer to the crux of Jesus' coming into our world.

    One such Christmas, I found myself living not too far from Bethlehem itself, but nowhere near anything I could cling to for earthly security—family, a sense of belonging, personal freedom. Far from the material or even religious trappings that can overshadow this holy season, I was suddenly confronted with the unadorned mystery of the Incarnation. There were heavier things on my mind than the logistics of family gatherings, church events, or shopping—I didn't know whether or not Yasmin's baby was going to make it.

     I lived in a low-income neighborhood, but Yasmin was poorer than the poorest of us. She was a foreigner, like me, but didn't have the same freedoms my American passport secured. Nine months pregnant and doing her best to care for Hamouda, her one-and-a-half-year-old son, Yasmin had been deserted by her husband for another woman. He sometimes stopped by the run-down, cramped apartment to give Yasmin money, but it was rarely enough to buy food or kerosene for her tiny heater. I feverishly tried to do what I could to help. Sometimes this meant sharing a blanket, getting extra kerosene from the neighborhood truck, or calming a wailing Hamouda; other times it just meant desperate prayer. As Yasmin's due date crept closer, my prayers grew more frantic. Her prenatal health would have horrified any good doctor—she was usually cold, hungry, tired, and overworked. I begged God to protect the baby in her womb.

    Little Amahl was born three days before Christmas without defect or illness, but he was tiny and weak. Yasmin was sent home almost immediately, even though she was still bleeding and unable to bend down. I'll never forget that Christmas Eve—there I was, crouching in front of the old, pungent-smelling heater, fearfully attempting to bathe the infant in a plastic laundry tub because his mother couldn't. As he shivered in my hands, I suddenly felt that, yes, this was who Jesus was—poor, displaced, and so, so vulnerable. Unlike the lyrics of "Away in a Manger," in which baby Jesus supposedly never opens his mouth, Amahl cried and cried because he was cold, because he was hungry (Yasmin still had no milk for him)—because he was human. As I held back my tears and prayed, I sensed God's presence settle on us inside those decrepit walls. With a knot in my throat, I helped Yasmin dry the baby with a kitchen towel.

    "Thank you, Jesus," said Yasmin, in her sweet, tired voice. I'd never heard her say His name before.

    My ideas of what Christmas was all about began to shift. I'd once felt distant from someone like Mary (not every girl gets to be the mother of God-in-flesh), but I began to recognize a connection—she, too, knew how it felt to be emotionally spent, far from home, drained from travel. And Joseph, pressing toward an unknown destination, undoubtedly suffered as he watched the woman he loved bear pain he couldn't bear for her; and yet he swallowed his fears as he led her away from comfort.

    As I walked home that night, I felt a strange comfort in the realization that Jesus and His earthly parents lived out their Story in the same weary world I sometimes struggled to make sense of. I watched the neighbors' lights flick off, one by one, and thought of the secret pains that met them as they retreated into their private spaces. It was as though I could hear the sadness, the longing for hope. And suddenly I caught a glimpse of that old Christmas Story, of the tiny Light breaking into the great darkness, growing steadily, shaping true joy as a potter shapes a vessel on the wheel. And I knew that this Light gave Mary joy in her weariness; this Light filled Joseph with wonder in the midst of what had to feel like utter loss and bewilderment.

    A push and pull of joy and pain, suffering and hope—the Christmas Story was all of this and more. Christmas is a time of joy, but is also a time when our human struggles become illuminated by the Incarnation of the one through whom all things were created. It is a time of transformation, of Christ identifying with us so that we might identify with Him; a time in which He invites us, again, to abandon ourselves to the greatest Story, so much greater than any that we might try to live on our own.

by Erin Gieschen