Focus on the Family

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
And so there is that sense of I'm failing here,
and I think a lot of people feel that in
a heightened way because the Christmas season is supposed to
be special and magical, and if that's what's not happening
at home, I think we feel a letdown.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, Bob, welcome back to focus.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
It is always great to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Let me start with this concept. And it's such a
beautiful part of scripture John three point sixteen. For God
so loved the world that he gave that's the gift
his only son, that whoever believes in him should not
perish but have eternal life. That's the gift God has
given us. Right, I mean, that's awesome, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It is?

Speaker 1 (00:44):
And in fact, I think we should think about the
attributes of God. One of his attributes is he is
a giving God. He's generous, he gives, and we are
to be like him. So we ought to be giving people.
We ought to be people who think about generosity and
giving during this time of year, and of course the
whole season points us in that direction. That's a part
of what retailers are hoping we will do all this year,

(01:09):
that we will be giving people. And I saw a
statistic that said the average family will spend somewhere around
nine hundred dollars as a family to give gifts to
family members and friends. So there's a lot invested in
this season.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, there really is. And that's part of it, the
differentiation that we need to do as Christians to say, Okay,
it's great to receive a gift, it's great to give
a gift, but that's really not the purpose of the
season right now, that's right, It's to acknowledge God well.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
And we're surrounded by messages we hear on the pa
at the shopping center. It's the most wonderful time of
the year. Joy to the world, peace on earth, and
we think that's what my heart's longing for. My heart
is longing for joy and peace and wonder, and maybe
this year I'll experience that. But what we often find
when we get into the season is that instead of

(01:58):
joy and peace and love and wonder, we're getting stress
and unmat expectations and sadness, and we go, why did
Christmas let me down this year? I think a lot
of people feel that way.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's funny, I was thinking you were going to say,
get out of get out of the way, lady.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I got to get in.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
A litt Christmas presents to buy.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
That's what the season brings to me. How can I
sho check out?

Speaker 3 (02:21):
You've identified these four common emotions. I was kind of interested.
I read the book and it's a quick read. You've
done this, so it could be a great gift for Christmas.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Actually, but three of them are are not positive, and
there is one that is. And we'll go through them
one at a time. We only have to cover four.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Good thing you didn't write the fifteen emotions at Christmas.
We have three day program, a week long series. But
you start with disappointment, and you know again I did.
I did not have an easy childhood. But I'm sitting
here thinking I never I don't think I ever felt disappointed,
even though my friends got more toys than me. But
what why do a lot of people feel disappointment at Christmas?

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I think it's more grown ups that feel it, interesting
that feel it because I think we come in as
grown ups with expectations that we have for what this
holiday is going to be. We want it to be special,
we want it to be perfect, we want the decorations
to be just right, we want the family relationships to
all meld together. We come in and we have memories
of great Christmases in the past. We want to replicate that,

(03:23):
and then something goes wrong in the middle of it.
Somebody has to cancel and can't come, somebody says the
wrong thing at a holiday party, or you find out
that what you wish you could give to the kids
this year is just not in the budget, it's not
going to work, or they don't have it anymore at
the store they've sold out of all of those things,
And our idealized hope for what this holiday can be,

(03:44):
we wind up experiencing unmet expectations and disappointment that comes
with that. And I think oftentimes we can get to
the end of the season and go I wanted it
to be more than it was, and it just didn't
turn out that way, And there's a sadness that comes
with them.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
There's a I was criticized with my first book, Finding Home.
You know, Daily's most important lesson here is don't have
high expectations. But I've really enjoyed my life having rather
low expectations, especially about the people around me. Right, Because
human beings, we let each other down. I mean, that's
the fact of life.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
But we see if you have.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
High expectations for relatives performing well at Christmas, and when
you're watching the Hallmark channel and you're seeing the perfect
working out of relationships or you're seeing other families.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
You look at the Christmas cards, those pictures we get
in the mail that we forget. It took somebody three
hundred shots to get that one where everybody's looking.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
We may have spent five hundred bucks for that photographer,
but we look.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
At that and we go their family looks so good,
and I know what mine is, and so there is
that sense of I'm failing here. And I think a
lot of people feel that in a heightened way because
the Christmas season is supposed to be special and magical,
and if that's what's not happening at home, I think
we feel a letdown from them.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
In that place of disappointment and expectations, you go to
a story that we don't often think about, with Mary
and Joseph to help us better manage our expectations.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
What did they teach us and what they said.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well, experience. Of course, their expectation had nothing to do
with having a baby. Before they got married. Yeah, right,
let's start there. You stop and think about what they
were expecting. Here was a young Jewish girl who was
betrothed to a man, to Joseph. We don't know what
his age was, but we have to imagine there was
some expectation, maybe some hope for joy Mary as a

(05:37):
young woman. She was a pious young woman, a devout
young woman. Joseph appears to have been a pious young man,
So we can think that this thirteen fourteen, fifteen year
old young woman was hoping for a beautiful marriage and
a loving family. And then she gets a message from
an angel who says, you're going to have a baby,

(05:59):
and everybody but he doesn't say this, but the implication
is everybody in town's going to be looking and thinking, Okay,
we know what happened here, and they don't know what
happened here. So the wedding had to be changed. The
wedding plans got changed, how they started their life together
got changed. And in fact, in the middle of it,
Rome comes in and says, I know you had wedding plans.

(06:19):
We have a census that trump's your wedding plans. You're
going to be traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem by donkey
while you're pregnant. This was not the way you wanted
to start your marriage together. So the expectations that Mary
might have had, and I'm using some creative imagination here,
but I think it's realistic for a young girl to
have that all of these when the Angel came and said,

(06:43):
change of plans. You are with child and you're going
to give birth to the Messiah. Here's the thing we
learned from Mary. Her response to that was, be it
done to me according to his will. She surrendered immediately
to God's purpose and plan for her life. Found her
joy in that rather than in her own expectations of

(07:04):
what that holiday. Of course, it wasn't a holiday back then,
they weren't celebrating Christmas, but what that special time in
her life was going to be.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
And how does that translate to us today at the
Christmas season? How do we learn from that and apply
it to our own life.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
I think we have to recognize as we go through
the season, there are going to be twists and turns
and curveballs and things that expectations that get unmet. There
are going to be adjustments that you have to make
and disappointments and letdowns, and I think we have to
go through the season with an attitude a mindset that says,
you know, God is in control of all the events

(07:38):
in my life, and I'm going to trust him for
the detour that he's just put me on, and I'm
going to purpose to glorify Him in the midst of
this detour, even if it's not what I was hoping
for or longing for. The Bible says when you experience trials,
you're to count it joy, and so joy to the
world may mean trials for you this Christmas, and if
that's the case, embrace the trial.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
That's good.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
You and I met in Texas, you were in San Antonio,
and I think there's a story in the book that
shares a little bit of a detour or an unplanned
moment revolving around Caeso.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
And Caeso and fijidas have been a part of our
Christmas tradition ever since we lived in San Antonio. And
Christmas was a busy time and so for Christmas Eve,
we didn't have anything special. I said, Honey, I'm just
going to stop by the Alamo Cafemily a pound of
fijidas and refried beans and rice and caeso, and that's
what we'll have for Christmas. The kids were young enough

(08:34):
that we would take a tortilla and put refried beans
on it, roll it up. That was dinner for them, right,
So we could stretch a pound of fijidas a long
way with our young family, and it became a regular tradition.
Every Christmas Eve we had fajidas. Well, when we moved
from San Antonio to Arkansas, I went to the store
and said, I need some skirt steak, which is what

(08:57):
you make bee fijidas or skirt steak. And they looked
at me and said, you mean flank steak. No skirt steak,
fheta meat And they said, I don't know what you're
talking about. This was back in the nineties and feidas
weren't the big thing that Well, all of a sudden,
it's like, are we going to be able to have
Christmas Eve the way we've always had it? Are we
going to When a tradition, a family tradition, gets let down,

(09:19):
there's disappointment that can come with that. Now here's what
happened in that over time, this Christmas fahida dinner, by
the way, I was able. I went about six grocery stores.
Finally at Sam's Wholesale Club, I found some prepackaged Foreheta meat.
We made it work, yes, but over time, as our
family expanded and we started to try some new recipes

(09:40):
and we added not just caso, but we should have
walk a moley, and you know, it was all coming
into this. Well, this simple Christmas Eve meal became an
elaborate thing that started to really stress out my wife.
I don't know about how is it your home.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
I've never been there before.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Meal planning for the high holidays can be a major
stresser for my wife. Christmas Eve, Christmas breakfast, Christmas dinner,
that twenty four hour period does not bring joy to
the world or peace on earth and goodwill to the.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Especially bouncing off Thanksgiving. Yeah, that's right. That was only
a month ago. That's right.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
So we had to learn again in the midst of
this that dust the holiday can bring stress and you
have to depressurize. This is one of the emotions of
Christmas that I think we have to anticipate and make
adjustments for. And if that means that you have to
ratchet down the fijita dinner on Christmas Eve. This is

(10:38):
what I've learned. You might have to say, Okay, I'll
just stop buy the Mexican restaurant and get it. We
don't have to do the fancy one anymore.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, Bob.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
In the book The Four Emotions of Christmas, you talk
about the use of holiday.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
And what it actually means.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
That has been It almost feels now in the Christian
community that we don't want to use the word holiday,
right because it's too general and it's become kind of
trigger word. You need to say Christmas if you're a believer.
But holiday in the bookie point I used to be
called Holy Day, Yes, and now it's been kind of co.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Opted by that. But speak to the origin of Holy Day.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, that's the derivation of the word. The Christmas holiday,
Interestingly enough, has a long history. So there was no
Christmas for the first three hundred years of the Church.
It wasn't until Constantine became the emperor that he declared
a feast around the Saturnalia feast. He said, we're going
to have a feast of the Nativity. That's when Christmas

(11:35):
was kind of established.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Born and Easter was really the early churches.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Was their central holiday, right, right, And then there was
a long period through the Dark Ages where Christmas kind
of fell along the wayside. Some of the Puritans thought
it was a pagan thing. Christmas was banned in Boston
for a twenty year period back in the sixteen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Sure wasn't two hundred years, I feel that way.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
But this was this was the history of Christmas. It
wasn't until Dickens wrote a Christmas Carol, and until Macy's
decided to have a holiday parade, that all of a
sudden we started to say, oh, maybe we should pay
a little more attention to Christmas. But in the process
of it becoming a celebration, a secular celebration, we lost

(12:19):
the idea that the focus of this day, it's a
holy day. We are to commemorate the birth of Jesus
on this day. And it's not wrong to have festive meals,
it's not wrong to open presents or give gifts. But
I think it is wrong to let this day pass
without stopping and pausing and remembering the great gift that

(12:39):
we were given at Christmas. We were given the gift
of salvation in the person of Christ at Christmas, and
that's what this holy day is all about. And so
while you're enjoying the fun and the family and the laughter,
we need to make sure that leading up to and
on that day, we are keeping Christ at the center

(13:01):
of our celebration and remembering that's what this is really
all about.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Like I think I'm going to reinstitute that at our house,
you know, call it the Holy Day Holidays. I like
that theme and that does focus it a bit better.
The third emotion is sad sadness, and you know here
at Focus, we have counselors that are answering calls and
you know, people that are having and experiencing some difficulty

(13:26):
in those emotional areas to call us, and I'd encourage
people to do that.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
I mean, they're here for you, and we will.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
If they can't talk to you right away, they'll schedule
a time to get back to you, because we don't
want you to be sad and lonely and depressed during Christmas.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
That's not what the season's about. But we know those
emotions are real.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
And people, you know, it's family breakdown, the things I
didn't have when I was a child, all those things.
But we want to encourage you to reach out to
a friend, your church, a pastor, et cetera. Focus, whatever
it might be. But you talk about depression sadness being
a common struggle at Christmas time, and you have a
story about the worst Christmas ever in the book. I'm

(14:06):
so glad you're the author of this book, so I
don't have to put my worst Christmas?

Speaker 2 (14:10):
But what was your worst Christmas?

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Our family had moved to California, away from extended family.
This was going to be the first time that in
our married lives it was going to be just us,
nobody coming to visit. We weren't going to visit anybody.
And on this first Christmas, we had lived in Sacramento
for two months. We didn't know a whole lot of people.
We hadn't decided what church we were going to land

(14:34):
in yet, and so on this Christmas morning, it was
mary Anne and me our three and a half year
old daughter, Amy, and mary Anne was four days away
from giving birth to our second child. A little busy, yes,
And we woke up on Christmas morning and went down
and under the tree were presents for Amy. The whole

(14:56):
thing Jim took about twenty minutes, and it was fun,
and then it was over and it was seven point
thirty and we had a special breakfast and then we
looked around and go, what do we do? We don't
know anybody, and we kept waiting for phone calls from
family members throughout the day to call and say Merry Christmas,
how are you doing? And nobody was calling, and it

(15:18):
was a lonely long day. In fact, we hadn't planned
on any Christmas dinner, and I looked around and said, well, okay,
there's got to be a restaurant open we can go
to on Christmas Day. Well, we found one. It was
kind of a sad cafeteria that not a lot of
people were at, and it was a depressing Christmas dinner
with the three of us going, this is the worst

(15:40):
Christmas ever. Finally, it was five o'clock in the afternoon,
we hadn't heard from mary Anne's mom. We thought, well,
we'll call her. It's seven o'clock back Central time. So
we call and she answers the phone. She says, oh, hi,
Merry Christmas. Everybody's over here. We're having a party. I
really can't talk right now, but Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Wow. Icing on the case.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
So we look back on that and said, okay, we
can't have another Christmas like this. We got to make
sure that we anticipate this. But it was sad. It
was lonely because we were unplugged from relationships and because
it was just us, and relationships matter so much.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, some people are going to experience that, Bob.
So if you could relive that day, what would you
do differently?

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I would be intentional about anticipating how we could be
together with other people who might be in our situation.
Maybe people in the church we go to, in the
church where our pastor now we look around and say, okay,
who might be alone on Christmas Day, and let's make
sure that they're cared for, make sure that the widows
have a place to go, that family is going to

(16:43):
come in. I think we have to anticipate what that
day is going to be. And if you look at
that and go, Okay, there's nobody to meet with. I
can't find anything. Then I would find out who's serving
Christmas Dinner at the homeless shelter and volunteer and go
down there. Racial spirits, Yeah, look for a way you
can get in and serve and be with people and

(17:06):
find some joy in that day. Because there are ways
to do it if you're intentional. You know what, if
it's Christmas Day and you've got no place to go,
you can you can make some Christmas muffins and go
up to the hospital where there are people working, and
go to the nurses station and say, I just wanted
to bring you some Christmas cheer because I know this

(17:26):
is a hard time for you. Or the fire station
or the police station. There are places where there are
people working. Go to the convenience store and say, Merry Christmas.
I just wanted to bless you. Find a way to
instead of just getting wrapped up in yourself, How can
you be a blessing to others?

Speaker 4 (17:40):
On That's a good idea, Yeah, that other centered perspective.
That's kind of captured in Isaiah. We hear a lot
from Isaiah at Christmas time. You cite in the book
from Isaiah nine how we can be light because Jesus
entered the world as light.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, talk about that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Isaiah nine starts off with this idea of the people
who walked in darkness have seen a great light, and
those who lived in a land of deep darkness, the
light has come. And when we feel like we're in
a dark world. Jesus is the light of the world,
and I think to get out of ourselves and our
own situation, our own circumstance, and ask ourselves, how can

(18:17):
we be other centered? How can we be God centered
in our thinking? In this I think that can start
to bring light into the darkness. You can be a
light as a follower of Christ. You are the light
of the world, and so you have the opportunity to
go out and let that light shine and find ways
you conserve people if you're alone on Christmas.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Day, Bob, we finally have arrived at the fourth emotion
that you highlight, my favorite joy. We finally got to
a good one after covering let's see disappointment, stress, and sadness.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Joy.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, so let's go, and this is the one we're
all hoping for. This is the one we're all longing.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
For exactly, and in fact, in the book you get
into the definition of Mary as in Merry Christmas, and
how the culture has lost the understanding of that word.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
We say it, but do we know what it means.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, the Christmas hymn God resty marry gentleman, there's a
comma in that, and most people think it's God resty,
Comma marry gentleman. But it's actually after the Mary that
it belongs God rest you Mary. So the idea of
resting Mary means resting with contentment, with joy in our heart.
It means resting in something that is settled. We're to

(19:27):
rest Mary in christ And here's the thing most of
us are looking for the Christmas holiday, the traditions, the
gathering with family, the food, the fun, the festivities to
produce the joy that we're longing for. And it can
produce momentary happiness, But there's a difference between happiness and joy.

(19:49):
Joy is a settled peace. It's a settled contentment that
knows in the midst of everything, there is still something
that I can hang on to. And so when we
think about joy at Christmas, yes it may come through
the events that we experience, but real joy comes only
when we understand what Christmas is all about and the

(20:09):
God who made us and the God who's responsible.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
For I like that.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
I think of joy as kind of that rock hard foundation.
You know, it's not going to be moved by your circumstances.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's joy.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
You also point people to Luke, you know, the famous
Christmas passage in Luke two. But one part of it
that we don't often quote is Simon yes, which actually,
when you look at evidence for who Jesus was, this
is one of the strongest quotes from the Bible.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
From Semeon.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
I love this describe it of the old man in
the temple. He had been coming to the temple for
decades because God had given him a promise, you will
not die until you see the Messiah.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Think of that.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
So every day Simeon goes thinking, is today the day?
And now he's old, we're not sure how old, but
near death. And he shows up one day and here
comes Mary and Joseph into the temple with their baby,
and the Holy Spirit quickens in him. That's him, that's
the Messiah. So he goes up to them and he says,

(21:09):
may I bless your baby, May I hold your baby.
They don't know what's going on. And the old man
takes the baby and he says, about the baby. Lord,
Now I can die in peace, he says, because I
have seen your salvation a light to the gentiles, and
the glory of your people Israel. And so that the
longing of his own heart was fulfilled in that moment

(21:31):
when he had a chance to see Jesus. And I
think about people today who have celebrated many Christmases but
have never seen in Jesus that he has a light
to the gentiles and the glory of Israel. They've never
seen that this is God's salvation to us. And when
I wrote this book, I thought would that people would
give this book to their neighbors, their friends, to people

(21:54):
in their neighborhood, take a plate of cookies, an invitation
to your Christmas Eve service at church, and a copy
of the book and say Merry Christmas. And give it
to people who don't go to church. And maybe in
reading about this something will stir in their own heart,
their own longing for joy, and they will say, maybe
the issue in my life is a spiritual issue. Maybe
I need to surrender my life to the Lord. That's

(22:15):
my hope for this point.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
And going back to this idea that at this season,
don't look for the temporal emotional fix, right, you know,
these are the long term things that we're talking about,
a sense of joy, deep peace that you have in
a relationship with Christ.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
It doesn't hurt to put an occasional band aid on
a wound. But if we want to heal the wound,
it takes more than a band aid. So yeah, there
can be some quick fixes, some adjustments along the way,
but ultimately let's address these these emotions spiritually by saying
God is the source of joy and peace and hope
in my life.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Well, you said it, Bob, and this has been wonderful,
a great reminder about what the Christmas season, the Holy
Days are actually about. The four emotions of Christmas. Again,
it's a great little gift to give people. Buy a dozen,
you know, and give them out to whomever might need
that encouragement. Again, four emotions of Christmas, and you can

(23:10):
get that directly from Focus on the Family. And when
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way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, donate today when you call eight hundred the letter
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got all the details right there for you and on
behalf of the entire team. Thanks for joining us today
for Focus on the Family with Jim Daily. I'm John
Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you
and your family thrive in Christ