A Christmas pep talk

Keep going

My daughter sings “Oh what fun it is to ride…”

Our newish, funny and sweet dog, Bubs, sneaks some licks of her yogurt.

I look at the painting I have of our old dog, beloved Moosey, my furry baby.

I see the huge wrapped gift my husband stayed up late to put together.

I hear the silence of my little boy sleeping, the one who makes himself known once awake, with giggles and often screams, trying to tell the world his big miracle story.

Each of our lives tells a tale of Christmas, of enduring love and grace.

Bubs, in all his 60ish pound glory, comes up on the couch to lay on my feet. My heart heals a little bit.

2025 was hard and toppled me with grief many times. Still, there was sweetness of kids who are growing up too quickly. There was noise and silliness and dancing.

Advent came and wrote a story of pretty significant illness and health scares, and there was a lot of questions and worries and praying for relief.

Fraught with concerns and imperfection and needing to trust in the Father to even make it to the next day, our story of Advent this year kept reminding me of the first Christmas.

And somehow, I’m not as jolted because even in the darkest of nights we’ve had over the last three years, there’s been little snatches of light.

We’ve made it this far. We can keep going.

Christmas is coming.

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Even two years later, it seems unreal that we were in the hospital for December and much of January when Sammy was a baby, not to mention many other hospitals stays.

The whole story of Sammy’s second heart failure is too long-winded for right now.

Snapshots are all my tired body has time for this Christmas Eve. Snapshots help me remember to take heart now, that hope will always arrive.

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We are inching closer to Christmas, in 2023, only a few days away, and doctors are trying to get us home.

Life and death at the holidays. It’s not a Christmas movie that would sell, but it has enough twists turns to hold your attention, lots of small hospital Christmas trees, and at least one minor celebrity.

Our sweet cardiologist on the floor of the CVIC tells us we can get home in time for Christmas if his sodium level gets back to normal. At this point, we’ve been there a couple weeks, and docs realize a second heart surgery will be needed for our sweet babe. But it’s like a bad math problem because instead of doing surgery now because his body is in distress, they need to try and wait it out so he heals from his first surgery that was just weeks ago. Doctors don’t want to tax his body too much, but the line for being stable enough to manage at home for a bit seems to be getting clearer. We’re nervous but hopeful.

Our careful cardiologist won’t send us home with any labs off, because he’ll already go home on approximately 7 heart medications. “There’s no Place Like Home for the Holidays” playing in my head, I have an idea.

Football players.

The lobby is flooded with them. Arizona Cardinals getting ready to visit kids and families stuck in the hospital. It dawns on me that is us. The things you see on TV: “basketball players make slam dunk for sick children” and other headlines that make it seem like hospital life for a second is glamorous. As if seeing athletes is worth the pain of your kid stuck in a bed instead of dreaming about sugar plums.

Still, I’m an idealist dreamer, and no amount of sick time in a children’s hospital could change that.

I walked straight up to the group of football stars and asked them if one of them could visit my son and give him a pep talk. “He’s a wild card. Right now it’s one lab that’s off but you never know. Can one of you talk to him?”

Almost in a parent asking the principal to share some life lessons with their kid to keep them out of their office, I’m desperate and it couldn’t hurt to ask.

One kind guy replies that he’d love to.

Each player was assigned to a floor of the hospital and it just so happened that he got the 5th floor.

I waited and I believed he would come.

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He did!

Here is the summary of his pep talk (to my seven month old baby who now needed a feeding tube because his heart was so sick):

“You can do it, you can get out of here. Keep going. I know that one day you’re going to be big and strong like me.”

Keep going.

Christmas is coming.

You’re going to make it.

Don’t we all need to hear that, year after year?

It’s Christmas Eve, and maybe we’re in an “over the fields we go… laughing all the way” mood, or maybe we’re sick or weary or burnt out or cold or questioning or some combination of it all.

Maybe we don’t get how a Christmas pep talk could even help.

Does that mean I should believe everything’s going to be just fine? Because what if it’s not?

I hate to ruin the movie of our year in the hospital, but everything did not turn out just fine after our last ditch pep talk.

We did make it home shortly after the players visited the hospital, which was a win (as my husband says, go sports!). But it would not be roller coaster if it ended there.

Sammy’s heart didn’t stay stable like everyone hoped, for a month or two months. He lasted a couple days until we knew he was too sick. And on Christmas Eve, we waved our white flags and turned back around for a two hour drive/ambulance ride and rang in Christmas morn in the ER there.

It was intense and there were tears and it was not the Christmas we hoped for.

This was supposed to be somewhat encouraging, you say. Why are you bursting my hopeful Christmas bubble?

I think because it was so real, and also so unreal.

I think because while some Christmases hold more mystery than others, I didn’t know it was possible to have a blend of holidays and hospital, smashing my illusions that every single Christmas would be magical.

It’s a long game, to use another sports metaphor. That’s what I realize about it all.

We can put a lot of pressure on a holiday to bring us bliss or joy or fill something inside us, even with good intentions.

And the beautiful story of the first Christmas does fill up those hollow or empty parts of our souls, that’s why year after year, “the weary world rejoices.”

But it is a long game, to bring our souls to the point where a rocky Christmas isn’t the end of the story, where we realize almost giving up isn’t the same as giving up, where jingle bells and bedside bells are all full of the incarnation of Christ. With us, closer than our broken bodies.

Wherever we are this Christmas (and if you’re in a hospital or sick at home, my heart leans more to you than anyone else), may your heart be. If your heart isn’t light, I still pray someone gives you the pep talk you need, or the comfort to know you’re okay right as you are.

May we turn toward one and other in hope as we travel to whatever Christmas is in store this year.