Christmas Eve 
December 24, 2025

This holiday season -this year is not what we would have chosen. It takes intention, discipline, and real emotional strength to choose our thoughts—because our thoughts shape our feelings, and our feelings shape how we show up for ourselves, and family, and those we meet. 

It’s easy to long for home during this holiday season. And yet, we know this is the next step in the journey we’ve been given.

Joy isn’t rooted in circumstances; it’s found in the way we choose to see them. Joy is a choice—one that doesn’t come naturally or automatically, especially when the season feels heavy.

I imagine it felt something like this for Mary—pregnant, tired, and traveling toward Bethlehem. Not wrapped in comfort or certainty, but moving forward in obedience, trust, and quiet courage.

This year, Jesus birth takes on a deeper meaning. It’s no longer a fuzzy, picture-perfect moment meant for a Hallmark card. It’s gritty. It’s sacred. It’s soulful.

We often picture Jesus as a baby wrapped in warmth—laid gently in a cozy, quiet barn, animals peacefully gathered, soft light glowing, everything calm and earthy. The manger scene has become a kind of aesthetic perfection. Gentle. Serene. Predictable.

But Scripture tells a very different story.

Jesus did not enter the world in calm.
He came into chaos.

There was no room for Mary. No bed. No privacy. She labored far from home, surrounded by uncertainty and exhaustion. A stable was not quaint—it was filthy, loud, and full of the smells of animals and waste. The manger was not a decorative crib; it was a feeding trough. This was not comfort—it was survival.

Luke tells us, “There was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). Heaven touched earth not in order and ease, but in rejection and disruption.

And still—God came.

Angels tore open the night sky while shepherds stood watch in the dark. Fear met glory in the same breath. The world was loud, messy, politically unstable, and spiritually weary. And into that—Jesus arrived.

Not into silence.
Into noise.
Not into cleanliness.
Into filth.
Not into control.
Into uncertainty.

This is the mystery: holy does not mean tidy. Peace does not require quiet.

So if this season of your life does not feel calm…
If it feels chaotic, heavy, loud, or undone…
If joy feels hard to reach and rest feels far away…

You are not missing Jesus.

You are standing exactly where He came.

Emmanuel—God with us—means He enters the mess. He does not wait for stillness. He is born right into the ache. Right into the exhaustion. Right into the places we wish were different.

And somehow—miraculously—peace still arrives.
Not the kind that removes the chaos,
but the kind that meets us inside of it.

And this is where Avry’s story lives.

Her fight—the fight of her life—has unfolded not in calm or predictability, but in the raw, unpolished places. Hospital rooms. Long nights. Fear and hope coexisting in the same breath. It has been messy. It has been holy. It has been survival.

And now, as we stand on Christmas Eve, in the midst of her fight, we do so with expectancy.

Because Christmas Eve has always been about waiting.
About holding our breath in the dark.
About trusting that light is coming.

The greatest miracle in history did not arrive with fanfare—it arrived in a feeding trough, in the middle of exhaustion and uncertainty. And if God chose that moment to come close, then we believe He is here now too—present, near, and working in ways we cannot yet see.

We wait with Avry.
We hope with Avry.
We believe with Avry.

Because if Jesus could be born into chaos and call it holy—
then this story is not over.

And miracles are still being written. 

Jake & Rose Schapansky  Trace, and Avry Jo