Tonight, I am going to a candlelight service with my family. They've made it a family tradition to go to a different midnight mass each Christmas Eve. I wrote this entry about the service we went to two years ago. I was home from college for Winter Break and was heartbroken over the news that my ex-boy was engaged.

December, 2005

I’ve been home since December 17th and to be quite honest, it’s been a boring and uneventful break. I’ve worked a little bit in my dad’s office but mostly been lazy bum. I thought it would be good to have such a long time for free time, but I’m antsy to get back to school and homework. As crazy as it sounds, I miss the homework. I need a balance of work and play.

Besides the boredom, it has been really good. There have been quite a few family parties where cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends come over to our clean house, looking their best and bearing dishes of food and gifts. The decorations are up, and people step in from the cold to warm greeting and hugs. There's a very special, almost magical feel to everything, as Christmas always feels.

Christmas Eve was snow-less. In years past, I’ve always been disappointed if it wasn’t a white Christmas, but this year it didn’t seem as important to me. White Christmas’s are beautiful but not essential.

I went with my parents to a Methodist Candlelight Service. My mom has made it a personal tradition to go to a different candlelight service each year on the Eve of Christmas. This year was my mom’s 5th year and my 2nd (having gone the first time she ever went and then again this year).

At first I was a little nervous, wondering if people would rush to the front to have the minister touch their forehead and put them into a convulsion, or if there would be tattoos and strange religious practices. I suppose it is the same ignorant feeling one might have if they've heard Mormon's hide their horns under their big Polygamist-style braids. But I was surprised to see a congregation full of regular people here to worship the birth of Jesus. I wouldn’t be able to tell a difference if there was a bishop up front and this was my ward. The rows were filled and the lighting soft. The speeches were spoken in soft, humble tones. The service was very touching, and I smiled when saw two middle aged women seated several rows in front of me dabbing their eyes as a girl sang a beautiful solo hymn.

I had been having a hard night before leaving for the service. Sitting in the back seat of the car and waiting for my mom to hop in so we could head off, I thought about my ex and his fiancée having a beautiful time together, being in love and in happiness. The same reverence and calmness typical only to Christmas Eve's was surely making them feel closer together, just as it was intensifying my horrible loneliness. I felt my eyes involuntarily fill with tears several times, but it was dark in the car, and I blinked them back. I didn’t want my make-up ruined. Christmas Eve, more than any other day of the year, seems to be the day you should spend with your close loved ones. I was burdened with the feeling that my close loved one had chosen to be elsewhere and in other company.

My mom finally got into the car, but yelled, “Wait!” and rushed back into the house. She came back out, got in the car, and took a big bite of a sandwich she had in her hands. “I just had to get some mustard for this sandwich, Craig,” she said. “Boy this really hits the spot,” she said, with her mouth full.

My eyes filled with tears, my heart felt like bursting out of my chest, and I loved my mom with all my heart. Perhaps it was the mood I was in, but I was touched deeply. There are rare, RARE moments in my life when the most normal of events will fill me with love I didn’t know I had in me; when the most common comments or situations will hit me like a ton of brick. When I am suddenly struck with a love for life, for family, for God and for the life and people he has given me. No matter how small or simple or common that moment is, for that one moment I feel like the luckiest person to have ever lived. My heart ached with the gratitude I so unexpectedly felt for all that I had and have ever had. I can’t specifically think of another time when this has happened, but I know there have been times such as this, when something as simple as, “I just needed some mustard for my sandwich,” shows me as clear as day, for just a moment, all the happiness I’ve ever known.

At the service, the minister passed around candles which we lit while singing “Silent Night,” and I offered a prayer, asking pleas for His presence and comfort, expressing gratitude for the blessings in all their forms that I’ve had in my life, asking forgiveness for not only my endless sins, but also for forsaking Him, for favoring loneliness over love, for choosing isolation over comfort, for closing my heart. I finally let a tear fall, and blew out my candle.