(Warning – tons of religious content to this blog – read at your own discretion!) At our house, Christmas is celebrated for religious reasons. And like Naomi on the Jewish Adoption Blog, I often cringe at the commercialization of it all. Now that Christmas decorations and sales in stores start well before Thanksgiving (heck…the Christmas decorations were next to the Halloween candy in October), it all seems so shallow and the message can definitely get lost.

But the message of Christmas is ultimately about love. God’s love. I heard a preacher say last night that he once prayed to ask what the most important thing God wanted him to know about God and the answer returned “I want you to know how much I love you.” Wow, no ten commandments; no here’s how you get to heaven; no Santa Claus, mistletoe or running up your credit card to the max…just “how much I love you.” And this, in a nutshell is Christmas’ message for Christians.

It is when I keep my focus on God’s unfailing, freely given love that I find it easier to parent my special needs child. It is when I am totally aware that I am not earning God’s love or my way to heaven that I can open my heart to the possibility of loving my child through all her unlovable moments, because I’ve already been given all the love I need. At times, though, I admit that this unconditional love convicts me to the core when I realize just how conditional my own love is.

It’s when my eyes are averted from this that I start to sink into despair. The world is NOT full of love – quite the opposite, in fact. And children who have been wounded by this world, especially through abuse and neglect, reflect that world, sometimes through very angry, offensive actions. (So do adults who may not have been traumatized like our little ones, but nonetheless are angry, offensive, destructive, loveless people.) It is hard to keep your perspective when people reject, offend, even sometimes persecute you.

I listen to the other parents of traumatized children talk about Christmas. Their children have a hard time coping and the holiday celebrations hang perilously in the balance. Many have traumatic memories associated with the holidays. Others are thinking about the rejection they feel from their past lives. Some are actively rejecting any attempt their adoptive parents make to show love through gift giving or spending time with them.

So, these children will break their new gifts, ruin their holiday clothes, say inappropriate things to friends and relatives, meltdown at family gatherings. They will steal from the party hosts (unless their parents have them under constant surveillance, and then that’s not even assured). Their outlandish behaviors are definitely on the rise, and definitely a major contributor to their family’s stress level.

And why? If it’s trauma and attachment-related, then it’s because the idea of unmerited love is VERY scary for them. Love is something their world has taught them that they don’t deserve. To allow someone to love them is to allow someone “in” and to be vulnerable. Love hurts (or Love Stinks if you’re a J. Geils Band fan.)

But the message of Christmas is, after all, that each of us is loved so much by God that he sent us a savior in an unsuspecting form – a newborn infant in humble beginnings. And it is this message of love that is so hard to grasp. It’s hard for us as the parents, being constantly barraged with our child’s disabilities and with the battles we fight on his/her behalf. But it is even harder for them – the children with so many disabilities and so much past hurt to work through. Yet it is there for the taking. The individual taking.

Love is an individual choice. It can be accepted or rejected. What we know as parents is that when a child rejects your love, your love doesn’t go away. Pain of the rejection comes, but the love is still there. And the hope that our child will truly know “just how much I love you” remains. I suspect the love, the pain and the hope is similar in God’s eyes as each of us choose.

There are three Christmas gifts I wish for each of you, dear readers, regardless of your circumstances or your faith beliefs. If you are parenting special children…may you unwrap a huge package of Peace, Joy, and especially Love this Christmas morning.