It was dark, and it was cold, and it was Christmas Eve. Instead of being home with my family, I was working late. Not because my boss was a Scrooge…at least I hope not, because I’m self-employed. I was working late on Christmas Eve because I didn’t know what else to do.

We desperately needed money. And even though I wouldn’t get paid for the work I was doing until I billed my clients and they decided to pay, I felt like I had to be doing something. I had started my own business early that year, and even though my first and largest client almost immediately went bankrupt, I had managed to eke out just enough income to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. Then, toward the end of the year, one of my self-employed friends casually mentioned the burden of self-employment taxes. What?! I had never heard of self-employment taxes! Oh yeah, he explained, they can be more than your income taxes. I’m sure my face went white when I realized we were thousands of dollars behind in our payments to the IRS.

Then our car broke. Bad. It was going to cost a whole lot of money that we sure didn’t have to be spending on car repairs. With all of the financial challenges we were facing, we weren’t going to be buying any Christmas presents. Or I guess I could try putting a positive spin on it—Holly was getting me that cylinder head I’d always wanted, and she was getting a timing belt. I hoped it would match her shoes.

We couldn’t even afford a Christmas tree. That wasn’t quite so tragic, because we weren’t going to be home at Christmas anyway. We had planned to travel and visit our parents and friends in our old hometown. That would do us good, to get away and be with people who meant so much to us.

But the night before we planned to leave, there was a record cold snap, and the pipes in our north wall froze. Since pipes can split when they freeze and it won’t be evident until they thaw out, we couldn’t leave and risk coming home to a flooded house. It was too late for our relatives to come to us; we were going to be alone at Christmas.

So I was working on Christmas Eve as if it would make some difference. I had lost track of the time, but my desk lamp was the only light on in the whole building. The phone rang. It was my wife, Holly. Our one-year-old son was throwing up. The cat was throwing up, too. Holly wasn’t feeling very well herself, and she was at her wit’s end. I immediately closed up my office, got in the car we had borrowed from a friend, and started for home.

I felt sad and angry and stupid and helpless. And it was Christmas.

Christmas was supposed to be a joyous time of celebration, filled with heartwarming experiences of every kind. I wished this was some kind of holiday movie, where I would walk in the door and see a bunch of our friends and neighbors, decorating the tree they had surprised us with. The fire was radiant, the hot chocolate steaming, and somehow I would be holding a sack of simple gifts for everyone. Then music would start playing, we’d all sing, and I’d look over and see Holly smiling coyly from under the mistletoe…

But this wasn’t a sappy movie. It was real life, and it hurt. I couldn’t get any gifts. I couldn’t make sick boys and cats get well. I couldn’t thaw my pipes or fix my car. I couldn’t hold my wife and tell her everything was fine. Right then all I could do was drive down the deserted roads…and fight back tears. I thought this had to be the worst Christmas ever.

Then I thought of another Christmas, and another guy who had a pretty rough time.

He was self-employed too, a carpenter, working hard to scrape out a living. The government decided to take a census so they could force everyone to pay more taxes…and even worse, he couldn’t sign up and get counted locally—he had to close his shop, put his wife (who’s pregnant out to here) on a donkey, and travel back to his family’s hometown. When they finally got there, it was so crowded he couldn’t even find them a room. You’d think their family members also there for the census would gladly offer to share their rooms, but there was the scandal about her pregnancy, so their friends and family turned their backs on them instead. About the time Joseph was thinking, “This can’t get any worse,” Mary said, “Honey, it’s time!” He led the donkey into the only shelter available—a little barn.

Alone and far from home; forsaken by his family; his lovely wife in labor in a smelly stable; a tiny newborn baby laid in straw in a feed trough. Everything had gone wrong, and there was nothing Joseph could do to make things any better on this terrible trip.

And the angels sang.

And the shepherds marveled.

And the wise men worshiped.

And God smiled.

And it was Christmas.

At Christmastime, we think everything should be perfect, and we try so hard to make it perfect. But the truth is we have Christmas precisely because we can’t make things perfect. We burn the rolls, we thaw the turkey too late, we spill cranberries on the white tablecloth, we fight with the in-laws, we tell a few fibs to impress people we don’t need to impress, we despise the uncle who ruins every gathering…and it’s Christmas.

We disappoint ourselves, and we take it out on others. We envy people who have more than we do, and we turn our backs on those who have less. We don’t do all the things we should, and we do the things we shouldn’t. We like to think we’re generally good people, but we have secrets we hope always remain secret. And it’s Christmas.

That’s the way things are, and we can’t change it—but that baby born so long ago can. Where there is anger, he brings peace. Where there is hurt, he brings healing. Where there is fear, he brings comfort. Where there is emptiness, he brings the presence of God. Where there is the hopeless darkness of death, he brings the iridescent light of heaven and abundant, effervescent, overflowing, everlasting life! And that’s Christmas.

I realized all of that while I was driving a borrowed car toward a home with no running water in the bathroom and no tree in the living room, where a frazzled wife was holding a feverish baby and wondering what we might find for dinner the next day. And suddenly I had a deep, comforting, reassuring joy. Because it was Christmas.

So the next time your best-laid plans fall through, when people let you down, when you let yourself down, remember: you’re not having a bad Christmas, just a good reminder of how badly we need it.