The Ghost of Christmas Future…

I was having breakfast Christmas Eve morning at a popular Pittsburgh restaurant n’@ while waiting for my car to get it’s brakes and rotors replaced. My dad and I had tried to replace the brakes the day before but we did not have pneumatic tools and the bolts on the left rotor were too rusted to get them lose without messing up the rotor. And so there I found myself right where God wanted me to be in order to experience the Ghost of Christmas Future…

As I was sitting there eating breakfast, an older gentleman in his mid 70's and his 40 something daughter came in to the restaurant and sat about a table away from me. They were close enough that I could easily hear the conversation which they had. This gentleman was not at all happy that it was Christmas Eve, and especially unhappy with God. “It’s all because of one man. One man sinned and we all have to pay the price. I don’t get it. God is supposedly loving, so why does he punish us all like this?…” At this point his daughter was trying to take his mind off whatever was bringing him down. She brought up a pair of shoes which he had bought someone, but all that did was give him more to go on about. Eventually his focus went to people suffering from storms and every possible hardship imaginable, and all because of one man, Adam. he kept saying that if God was so loving, then why did he punish all men for the action of one man. My heart went out to this gentleman. I wanted to go over to him and introduce myself, to gently explain the nature of sin, suffering, Christ and redemption to him. But this was not the place for such a conversation and I did not have the time for it due to needing to be at work as soon as my brake job was completed. It saddened me that on the eve of the birth of Christ anyone could be so bitter over the presence of sin and suffering in the world and could not focus on the birth of Christ, who redeemed the world from the sin of Adam.

I am not really sure that I am the one who should be writing this blog post because over the past five years between 2014–2019 I had let quite a bit of frost bite settle into my heart due to the things that occurred which no longer needs to be mentioned. I had become bitter toward God,the Church (especially the OCA-Orthodox Church in America)and those who partook in the events of 2013/2014, including “the nun.” I woke up the morning of July 13,2014 to realize that what had happened 2 days earlier left me with less than 10 people in the entire world who I trusted. It took me 2 days to realize this because I had a wedding to photograph on July 12, 2014. This required me to completely ignore the events of July 11th for a day so that I could photograph the wedding and not lose my sanity. The mental dissociation worked until I got in my car after the wedding, and then I lost it. At that time I did not know if I would survive one day, let alone 5 years. Over the next 5 years I became extremely bitter toward life, the universe and everything, especially God. I was so bitter that I even stopped painting icons, which is something that I love more than life itself. It was not until the summer of 2019 that I began to let my heart thaw out enough to even begin painting again. Thus I can say with full certainty that I knew exactly where this old man was coming from! Looking back now I can say with certainty that July 11, 2014 was the beginning of the rest of my life. What looked like a tragedy at that time turns out to have been the biggest blessing of my life.

I realize now that this experience of the interaction between the old man and his daughter was no chance encounter. No, it really was a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future. It was a warning from God saying: “Michael, if you do not allow yourself to heal and let a little love in your heart, this is what you will become.” It was a stern but gentle warning from God of what I would become if I did not allow healing and love into my heart. Yes, holidays are extremely difficult for me as an autistic person, as I noted in my last blog post. However, this does not mean that I can just take a “bah humbug” attitude toward the holidays as I have the past 4 years. Not having family in the area and having no close friends here in Pittsburgh did little to help me battle the frostbite which had settled into my heart. It was not until this summer when I finally gave in and listened to the gentle encouragement of my friends to start painting icons again that I began to heal from the frostbite. Then this fall when my parents moved back to Pittsburgh I again listened to the loving encouragement of a friend who urged me to take baby steps toward healing my seriously damaged relationship with my family. Luckily for me a 5 year old niece who loves to draw and color was more than willing to help me reestablish my relationship with my parents. This was the beginning of the real healing.

And so I found myself sitting there wanting to go over to this old man and give him a huge, gentle hug. I wanted to tell him that his focus was completely on the wrong place, and the wrong man. He was focused on “one man”, which he should be, but he was focused on the wrong man. If God was so loving why would he allow the sin of Adam to effect every other person who came after him? The man was angry with God for seemingly rejecting the sin of Adam, instead of being angry with Adam for rejecting the orders that God gave him to live by. His focus was backwards.

My focus became backwards for a few years until I was finally willing to admit that in spite of all that had happened to me and how much I tried to reject God, he still loved me and was watching over me even more intently than ever. I tried to reject God because I was angry at him for giving me a second chance. In 2007 I, like Adam, tried to cheat life and live by my own rules. I was so arrogant that I thought I could go against the natural order of life and get away with it. I was wrong. The consequences were disastrous. Sure they looked pretty for a short while, but they soon turned ugly. In the end I lost nearly everything because of it. This made me bitterly angry with God. What I could not see at the time of the great loss was that it actually was an act of God’s mercy. The day it all happened God was actually giving me my soul back. I could not see that at that time, and so I was angry. Angry that I lost most of my so called friends. Angry that I lost my house and most of what I had. Angry that I lost a woman who never really was mine in the first place. Like this bitter old man, I was focused on the wrong man. How could God allow this? Instead I should have been focused on myself. How could I reject the love of God and his simple rules that he asks all men to live by.

I would have loved to have helped this bitter old man focus on Christ and accept his love. His daughter was trying to do this, but was seemingly failing. It might have taken a big cigar and an IPA or 2, but I wonder if I could have shared with him enough of God’s action in my own life to help him realize that the man he needed to focus on was not Adam, but Christ. It was only when I allowed myself to focus on Christ and start painting icons again that I began to accept the fact that God really did love me, in spite of everything that had happened over the past few years. Once I began to accept that God still loves me and that even though my heart and soul were seriously injured they were capable of love that the real healing began. Christ is the reason for the Holy Day of Christmas. Not Adam. Christ was born to bring healing to a broken world. I am thankful that I got the message in time to celebrate Christmas this year. It was not easy for me to do. I may have had a meltdown or two in private in doing so, but I did it. I set up my Christmas tree. Gave gifts to a few select people. Even made it to Divine Liturgy. Celebrated Christmas with my family. I even had a snowball fight with my niece in my parent’s living room! And I am glad that I did so. Christ is born! Glorify Him!!!