(This is the first of seven vignettes…I’ll post a new one every day or two)

On Christmas Eve of 2006, I boarded a plane in Connecticut and flew home to Chicago.  My parents and siblings picked me up from the airport, and we drove to church for the Christmas Eve service.

I had always hoped I’d be like Mary – a young woman who loved God, whose life took an extraordinary turn.  My life had taken an extraordinary turn, but in the wrong direction. Instead of beating the odds to become pregnant with the Messiah, I’d beaten million-to-one odds and gotten breast cancer in my 20’s.  And God was nowhere to be found.

After the pageant, the ushers dimmed the lights and passed out small white candles.  As I held the flickering light in my hand, we began to sing Christmas carols a cappella.

Angels we have heard on high

Sweetly singing o’er the plains

And the mountains in reply

 Echoing their joyous strain

Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

In excelsis Deo.  I knew from my Sunday School days that the phrase was Latin for “God in the Highest.” It reminded me of another Latin phrase, in extremis.  This was a phrase I had learned in my medical training that described a patient who was struggling to breathe as they died. In extremis is translated as, “in the farthest reaches” or “at the point of death.”

As I listened to people around me singing carols, I thought, “God, don’t want you to be in the highest; I need you to be with me now in the lowest.”

That’s where I felt that Christmas: In the lowest depths.  In the farthest reaches.  At the point of death.

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