Follow the star

The leaden feeling in my stomach was not a Christmas feeling. Nor was the heaviness in my heart as I climbed the stairs toward my waiting family. But gloom lay thick on me that Christmas, and as soon as I saw my sister’s face, it deepened. This was going to be the worst Christmas ever.

It hadn’t started out that way. Christmas with my family is always a sweet but quiet affair. Mostly, we’re just glad to be together after a year away. And though there are lights and gifts and a special Christmas dinner, for the most part, we keep it simple. We keep it about family—about love.

But something had happened that Christmas. I arrived at my parents’ house to discover that my sister, who’d also flown in from far-flung parts, was in a rotten mood. No, not rotten. Horrific. Grinch-like. A black cloud hung over her head, and though we’d spoken on the phone just the week before and all seemed fine, now she barely had two words to say to me. Those two words, by the way? Let’s just say they didn’t exactly embody the spirit of Christmas.

I was miserable and frantic. It was Christmas for crying out loud. And family rifts, inexplicable or otherwise, were certainly not on my wish list. I tried everything I could think of: planning fun activities, making my sister her favorite peppermint hot chocolate, even backing off. When none of that worked, I cried…and finally began to pray.

I prayed with my favorite aspects of the holiday: love, peace, joy, harmony. I thought about the power of the Christ, that love-link we each have with God that is “ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself.” ¹ I loved the idea that the harmony-giving spirit of Christmas would keep reminding me of what was true—about my sister and about me—until I embraced it completely.

But Christmas morning dawned, and nothing seemed to have changed.

“Ugh,” I thought, as my sister glowered at me over breakfast.

“Ugh,” I thought as she spoke barely another two words to me during gift-unwrapping.

“Ugh, ugh, UGH!”

That’s when I heard the message: Follow the star.

It being Christmas and all, I’d been spending a fair amount of time with the Christmas story, so I knew immediately what star that Christ-message referenced. It was the star that led the wise men to the baby Jesus—across deserts and strange lands. It shone over their encounter with a jealous king, and drew them to the humble manger where their Saviour lay.

That star guided them, gave them purpose. Perhaps they looked to it for reassurance that they were following the right path. It’s not exactly like they had an address for Jesus. It’s not as though they had much more than their intuition—a deep and abiding faith that following that star would lead them to something great and beautiful and promised.

Of course, I didn’t have a literal Christmas star to follow, but in that moment I saw the star as a symbol for allowing the Christ-light to break through the darkness of fear, of feeling lost, of feeling anything but the pure faith of the wise men. I saw that this star would lead me through this desert in my relationship with my sister. I saw that as I felt the radiant light of Love shining on me, and on her, I would find my way to a place where I could love and feel loved, too—no matter how my sister seemed to be acting.

I wish I could say that things changed, right there on Christmas day. But it actually took a whole year of following that star, a whole year of loving like I’d never loved before, and praying to see her in a way I’d never seen her before, until something shifted.

That next Christmas, though, I had something greater than a restored relationship with my sweet sister. For the first time, I could relate to the wise men. No, it was more than that. I felt a kinship with them. I got them in a way I hadn’t before. I finally understood the kind of unwavering persistence, the kind of humility and obedience and strength it took to make the journey they made.

For the first time, I also caught a glimpse of the incomparable rewards that come from heeding that simple but powerful message: Follow the star.