Christmas with the Bruins

It’s Christmas Eve, so we’re on track for “Christmas with the Bruins.” Our friend Sheri picked up on that theme too. She's a UCLA fan. I told her this episode is sort of a 70’s style TV special but without the musical numbers, costumes, lavish sets, or celebrities. And it's at a hospital. Our friend Alecia said Jesus wears scrubs tonight.

This is our third hospital holiday, following 2007’s Independence Day brain surgery and Labor Day meningitis. I guess this Christmas seizure swarm means we’re working through the calendar.

We’re sad to be away from our kids this Christmas except for bedside visits after a 25-mile drive to Westwood. We usually have church together and a Romberg family celebration on Christmas Eve, followed by our morning gift exchange and a Buccowich family celebration on Christmas Day. We love our family time and we’re sad to miss it this year. We’re sad to have our traditions interrupted. We’re sad for all that’s happened to Susan and for the burden it is on our lives.

Whatever heartache we may feel in being disconnected from our family and in struggling with brain cancer, we’re thankful to God for the gift of Jesus. I understand them so little; but I’m amazed at the great things God accomplished to bring about the life and mission of Christ.

There’s a lyric in “Carol of the Moon and Stars,” from Bob Bennett’s brilliant “Christmastide” album. He writes, “Look up, see the chaos and precision of the Living God.” Wow. That’s a word for me. We’ve known so much chaos – illness and upheaval, loss and brokenness. But we also sense God’s precision – his purposes at work in our lives that are magnificent in scope and perfectly executed, just on time. We don’t know how it all works. We trust God who does.

We love his peace that helps us as we move under the chaos into the stream of his precision. It’s a big pile of hurt with a place of consolation underneath. It’s a jagged crust of despair hiding hope inside a warm, gooey center. It’s so like God to compel us to find him in his stillness while the world rages all around. It's just like he did when the King of Kings came to Earth in the unexpected perfection of a baby in the filth of a stable. Merry Christmas.