THE RED CHRISTMAS BALL

Here is an entry dedicated to betrayed spouses who are struggling with pain through the holidays. Triggers, painful reminders need not ruin Christmas forever. There is hope for your future.

 I remember feeling empty and sad as I met with my small women’s support group of 10 years at Christmas time. While they had their own struggles, they were not living the disaster I was experiencing.

When they talked about their holiday family vacations, remodeling their houses, and other such normal things, I’d be dying inside, thinking, “I don’t have a family to vacation with! Ours is torn apart! I am displaced without a home to remodel.” I felt jealous of their intact families and lives going on with only minor stressors like mine used to. As tears rolled down my cheeks, one friend just kept talking faster, hoping to help by distracting me. This only made me feel worse and more alone. Why didn’t she just ask, “What’s going on, Linda? Talk about your tears.” But no such questions came. I felt isolated in my sorrow.

I flashed back to two Christmases earlier, after learning that my husband’s affections were attached to another woman. Terrified of losing him completely, I was such a nervous wreck, I shook all the time and hardly slept. I couldn’t even steady my hands enough to decorate for Christmas. My gracious friends helped me decorate our house for the sake of my kids and plans to host an upcoming office party (one that ironicly included her). I remember sobbing through Amy Grant’s, “My Grownup Christmas List,” with the longing for “no more lives torn apart.”

I share all that, also remembering that during my desperate times in prayer, the Lord kept reminding me of a Christmas card a friend sent me, with a lovely, red Christmas ball enveloped in greens on the cover. This image often came to mind whenever I closed my eyes.

At first this picture was difficult, as it harkened back to earlier memories of when my charming future husband asked me to marry him while lying on our backs on the rug in his living room as we gazed at the glistening tree lights above. That Christmas had seemed so magical. I had waited many years for “someday my prince will come” and my dreams back then seemed to be coming true. Such remembrances only sharpened my current pain.

After our happy wedding that summer, I went into our first Christmas as a married couple full of anticipation. I wanted to make it a special memory for us. I spent a day making a large batch of cookie dough to decorate sugar cookies on Christmas Eve. I was shocked when he let me know that I didn’t prepare for the Christmas cookies “right.” I also learned that he hated my treasured rust-colored Christmas balls from Mexico that matched my former home (back when rust carpets were “in”). I felt unwelcomed and put down. That night, I hid in our bedroom, sobbing on the phone with my best friend, telling her I wished I could “run away.”

Over the coming years our Christmases grew sweeter as he learned to appreciate my ability to create lovely Christmas arrangements and I learned to keep our Christmas colors more traditional. Yet, each year I secretly I hung one of those rust-colored balls on the back-side of the tree as a memorial to my individuality. Still, looking back, I can understand why he found my dated rust balls unappealing compared to typical Christmas colors. I just wished he had expressed his preferences more kindly.

Fast forward years ahead when our kids were in high school and college. I learned just before Thanksgiving that my beloved husband was in love with a woman at work. This explained his recent air of detachment from me. I felt invisible, like I suddenly meant nothing to him. This change-of-heart led to two years of hell that seemed to intensify at Christmas each year, tainted by his attraction for “her” and his total disdain for me. Through multiple separations, I was puzzled that during my tearful pleas with God to save our marriage, that little image of the lovely Red Christmas ball kept coming to mind. Why, Lord? What did it mean?

I thought perhaps the ball-vision meant we would be happily reconciled again at Christmas, this year or the next. After all, he loved me the Christmas we got engaged. And, despite the insensitivity on both our parts during our first married Christmas together, many happy Christmases had followed.

Instead, I was crushed to learn from a friend at a Christmas party, of all things, that my beloved husband was telling friends he planned to divorce me in the New Year. The irony was not lost on me.

Devastated, I believed Christmas was ruined forever for me. That I would never again find the holidays a time to celebrate. But rather, a time to mourn.

When I lived separated and alone in a condo (in contrast to our former huge waterfront house, the bustling center of so many happy family and community activities), I searched for a tiny tree to fit in my new, smaller living space. I found a skinny, fake tree that would fit. Then when shopping at a local Christmas store called “Seasons,” I fell in love with some beautiful red balls with gold accents that I could hang on this straggly tree to brighten my living room, despite how dead I felt inside. I purchased two dozen of them, not making the connection yet. But God was with me through those next grief-filled Christmases.

I had no idea that three years later I would date and become engaged to a new and wonderful man who genuinely loved me as well as Jesus — at Christmas time! During our engagement, those new red Christmas balls seemed to sparkle with joy, even though I had forgotten about the prayer image of promise from years ago.

After being remarried to this kind, faithful man for the past 17 plus years, those lovely red balls (which not only celebrate Jesus’ coming but also represent the blood shed from His dying) are still my favorite tree decorations. No rust colored ones to be found.

Upon reflection, these large red balls now remind me of the prayer image of the single red ball of many years ago. I realize that God saw it all—from the beginning — through the many Christmases of my life— from the initial joy of getting engaged to the man of my dreams, during the heartbreak of betrayal through the holidays, then the Christmas nightmare of facing unwanted divorce, the comfort of God during a season of lonely Christmases, and on through to the joy of fresh love and rebuilding new dreams. Not just with Dan but many new friends, extended family, and redeemed purpose in my career.

I hope my story can bring hope and comfort to those of you who feel betrayed and/or forsaken at this time of year. Jesus is with you during Christmases of Joy, seasons of weeping, and future celebrations of renewed Hope.

If this Christmas only seems to bring reminders of loss, hang in there. This is not the end of your story. New meaning is yet to come.

Jesus’ name in the book of Revelation is FAITHFUL and TRUE. He will never betray or forsake you. Our Christmas Messiah is rightly referred to as “God With Us” — He is with you in your past, present, and future. Lean into His loving presence through the worst of times and the best of times. And hold onto the loveliness of Christmas and all that it represents — no matter your current feelings and circumstances. “This too shall pass.”