A Christmas Sampler a Christmas Anthology by Andrea DiMaggio Julia's Story for those who struggle with faith and self... Buon Natale, miei cari amici dolce

Julia looked out the window, hoping against hope that the car coming down the street was hers. Her contact prescription was two years old, and she had to wait until the car was almost right past the house before sighing as it drove past. She looked down at the letter in her hand,

“I’ll be at my mother’s, Cheryl.” Julia crumpled the piece of paper and wept.

The Campaniello home...Vails Gate, New York...Eleven Forty-Two P.M, Christmas Eve

She sat down at the piano but her heart wasn’t in the music. The duets she sang would be half-silent; perhaps her voice would be joined once again, but she was not hopeful. After a few moments of trying to play she closed the lid, pushed away from the piano and went into the living room. Every bit of decoration lay unopened in boxes around the room. The tree, unwatered, had already begun to shed needles on the beige carpet, leaving it looking like a forest floor. The phone rang, giving her a start. She ran to the phone and picked it up.

“Cheryl? Oh…I’m sorry..no I’m not interested.” She hung up the phone and stared at the door, feeling foolish over the desperate hope but unable to let the hope go, despite her mate’s angry frightened words of parting. “You took my husband from me, you hurt me beyond healing, and I hate you. I’ll be at my mother’s, Cheryl”

Walking over to the mantel she picked up the lone Christmas card sitting on display. She opened it and read the twin messages; one printed and pithy —

Celebrating our Savior’s birth.

— and one handwritten, trite, and painful, if well intended.

Dear Jim and Cheryl, looking forward to seeing you over the holidays. Jim…we’ll talk. Rev. Peter and Elizabeth McDaniels

“We’ll talk? More like you talk and I listen.” She looked down at herself. Was she really so evil? She nodded in agreement with the assessment as she scanned her appearance in the mirror over the mantle. Cream colored satin blouse and blue jeans. Her hair was lighter after the stress of the last two years, and it set off her features, giving her face character; albeit an appearance that made her look like Diane Keaton’s tired, sad little sister even if she had only just turned thirty.

“What do you want from me?” She said to no one in particular, but it really was a prayer. She’d gotten the counseling everyone had insisted upon, hadn’t she? She submitted as much as she could to the authority of the elders, hadn’t she? She nodded in acceptance as they stripped her of her ordination as a worship leader, didn’t she? She prayed and prayed and prayed, like a distaff Apostle Paul for the thorn of the flesh to be removed, and yet here she was. She had changed, but the changes were imperceptible from the outside.

Wasn’t she a kinder person? Didn’t she care more for others than for herself. She tried denying her calling, but it remained, irrevocable. She tried denying her nature, yet here she stood, as much herself as ever, as someone once said.

“Florence is getting more like herself everyday,” her uncle would say about her favorite if somewhat eccentric aunt. Oddly, she identified more with her Aunt Florence than her own mother. She never really identified with her father, a tired broken man who died just before she graduated high school, the victim of his own codependent excesses. And she tried to identify with her mother; in fact she tried to be just like her mother.

“You disgust me…what would your father say if he was alive?” The answer was that her father wouldn’t have said anything; instead giving his son the back of his hand in anger. No words would ever hurt more than the silence after the beatings. And her mother would stand off to the side in quiet tacit approval.

“You’re no son of mine,” she recalled her mother saying ironically. The rejection was almost a blessing, since it ushered her out of the house and into real life. A very recent but tense reconciliation would bring new rejections as her mother would continually ask her if she wasn’t worried about going to hell even as they drank their tea in their newly discovered mother to ‘daughter’ relationship.

And now the final loss; the love of her life finally getting too disappointed to tolerate her; she had married a man, after all, and it wasn’t fair to expect her to accept this old if heretofore unrevealed facet of her husband of five years. Reasonable guilt over her years of deceptive silence, however fearful and unintended gave way to feeling guilty all the time. Evil…it comes in many forms. And she tried to cast it out. But like some theologians say, you can’t cast out ‘the flesh.’ These men think themselves to be clever in their condemnation, but in a way they were right.

Julia began to tear up as she recalled the years of counseling; first to be a good husband. Quickly followed by learning to accept hardship and grief as she and Cheryl had learned they were unable to have children. The long sessions of prayer followed by others praying for healing followed by strange men and women recommended by friends of friends; casting out demons and calling down God’s angels to deliver her from ‘perverse’ spirits.

The purging; both of garment and self-concept and esteem. The nights of sleepless prayers; hands twisted; self-wrung to painful distraction. The stares of expectation; the hopeful, self-deceiving nod followed by long periods of approval and acceptance in the marital bed and breakfast. And yet, she still was desperately, hopefully in love with the wife of her youth, even as the wife of her youth rejected her own dear sweet wife in favor of a husband who never really existed.

She looked in the mirror once again, noting the freckles dotting her face; a new and suprisingly attractive feature courtesy of recently broken capillaries due to the vomiting that visited her every night. The stress of the management and ultimate fracture of her relationship with Cheryl had brought about ulcers and reflux.

And yet she smiled. She tried as hard as she could to remember any of the Scriptures that had been wielded against her perversion, and yet she could only recall one at the moment.

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

She sat down at the piano once again, more out of a physical prayer than a need for music, although she needed her music now more than ever. Like David calling out to God, the words came slowly, almost with excruciating emotional pain. Excruciating…like a crucifixion of sorts. She prayed like David to create in her a clean heart. She wanted no part of any music that denied or compromised her faith. The words came to her like the presence of God…something of an old James Horner melody in her heart… bittersweet and speaking in notes what the words would agree with…

Do you love me? Can you speak my name?
Do you know me…know that I’m the same
I’m the one you loved forever
I’m the one that you bore
Even more…I’m your child

Maybe someday…

Why couldn’t they see? Why couldn’t they speak her name? She closed the lid of the piano and rested
her head on her arms and began to weep. Year after year of rejection came back in waves; she had vowed only the day before not to allow the ghosts of the past steal from her present or future, but the tears were a necessary part of her cleansing; the past can never truly be past until it is faced and reckoned with.

“You’re not my son…” The accusation rang in her ears. Not a recognition of her true self as much as a bitterly disappointed condemnation.

“You took my husband from me,” the words seemed to echo; more a lament of loss and an indictment for a murder never committed. She didn’t blame Cheryl even as the words still made her weep disheartened and discouraged tears…Her shoulders convulsed as she sobbed; the pain of losing her only love…

“Jim? Jim…Ju…Julia?” A soft voice came from behind. She turned to see Cheryl standing behind her; a soft touch on the shoulder quickly followed by,

“I don’t know how to love you…I can hardly bear to face what you’ve become…what you are. But… I… still love you. I hate everything about this…I don’t understand it and it scares me… I’m sorry…but it does.” Cheryl had already been crying; her face was puffy and red and the lines in her face showed she had been unable to sleep.

“I…I’ll go change.” Julia said softly in surrender. Cheryl grabbed her shoulder and squeezed, stopping her from leaving.

“No…if I’m to love you…I need to love every part of you.”

“I don’t….what are you saying?” Julia looked at Cheryl with pleading eyes, hoping it wasn’t yet one more false start toward change. She had vowed to herself she would completely let go.

“I…I prayed all last night…I called in sick at work…and I prayed all day…” She shook her head as she fought back her own weeping.

“It’s like if I reject this part of you it would be like asking you to stop playing piano…like if you asked me to stop singing. Separating us from who we are. I'm not sure I know if I want to live with a wife…but I guess…I know I’m willing to live with a woman who was..who is my husband, if that makes any sense?”

“I don’t know what to say…I’m sorry, but I’m so scared, Cheryl…Like you’ll change your mind…I want to trust you, but I haven’t been exactly ….you have lost part of me…I’m so…I hate myself…” Julia began to sob, but her arms were lifted as Cheryl placed them around her waist.

“I might have trouble; I haven't made up my mind, but I haven’t changed my heart…I love you.” She kissed Julia on the cheek.

“But I need to know I still have a husband…inside?" She placed her hand on Julia's heart. "...that he'll always be a part of you…I can’t do this unless I have all of you, Jim…Julia?”

“Yes…” Julia nodded, but she put her head down and her shoulders seemed to lower. Cheryl grabbed her chin softly and lifted her head.

“No…I don’t understand this…need of yours, but I accept it…part of who you are...who you really are? Do not be ashamed. Do not take this gift and lessen it. I gave myself to you five years ago, and I give all of me to all of you on this day of days.” She raised her hand and wiped the tears from Julia’s face.

“I can’t promise I’ll be able to know what to say or to do, but I promise I’ll never leave you…Just promise me that you’ll never leave me, Jim…I’ll try to learn to love Julia…but never leave me, my dear sweet spouse?”

“I love you so much, Merry Christmas.” She put her head on Cheryl's shoulder and wept. Cheryl kissed her...perhaps for the very first time before finally saying,

“Merry Christmas, Julia.”

Next: Betsy's Story