I am a crier. I well up when I see a sappy commercial. Sad or sentimental movies reduce me to a quivering mess. Once, Hubby was away for the afternoon and when he called to check in, I was weeping as if the world was coming to an end. He’d turned the car around and was headed home by the time I could recover myself enough to tell him it was OK. I’d been watching “The Yearling”.

“Haven’t you learned by now not to do that when you’re by yourself?” he yelled into the phone.

I thought about Hubby’s frustrated question the other night as I hurried out of church, averting my gaze so that no one could see my puffy eyes and tear-stained face. Before this year, I’d never been to a Christmas Eve church service. I don’t know how I managed that, exactly, but it’s true. I’d also never experienced a “candle light” service of any sort. If I had, I would’ve insisted that Hubby accompany me for moral support.

I usually go to church alone and get along just fine. The sermons and hymns are generally not all that mushy, and I listen and sing along happily, not a tear in sight. Church, in fact, sets my mood for the rest of Sunday, and I leave cheerful, humming the last song and pondering the homily. Often, I drive around for a while, enjoying the holy afterglow, before I go home to my heathen Hubby and the dogs.

From the moment I entered the building on Christmas Eve, though, something was different. I was restless. It was past dark, and everything in town was closed, save for the convenience stores and the churches. It almost seemed as though the few folks already seated in the sanctuary were the only people in the world. It was a lonely feeling.

The service was beautiful. I knew all of the songs for once, and sang loud, knowing that on this most important evening, God would keep my neighbors’ ears from bleeding. There was a feeling of anticipation in the air. I felt the barely contained joy of my fellow church-goers, but I was as a stranger, isolated from the crowd by the fact that I was new, and didn’t know what was coming.

At a point, the ushers were instructed to come forward and receive the “light”. With their tiny tapers, they each took a piece of flame from the candles at the altar, and the electric lights were slowly dimmed. The organ wheezed into the first bars of “Silent Night”, and we sang in the darkness as, congregant by congregant, the flame was passed down the aisles.

I was OK, enthralled even, until an usher appeared at the end of our pew. The tiny light from his candle dipped to the wick of the person at the end, and he turned to the person next to him. Two passes later, I scooted the distance between the spot where I’d cuddled alone in the corner of the pew to receive my own little bit of light.

Still singing, I held my unlit candle out to a stranger. When I looked into his face, bathed in the white light of the good news, it was so warm and inviting that I nearly staggered. I knew what the shepherds felt when they looked into the face of the angel who appeared to them. He smiled and lit the candle in my shaking hand, and I made it back to my spot without setting the place on fire.

I tried to finish singing, but by then the emotion had me, and what came out was something like “Siiilennnt snuffle snuffle, nigh hhh hhh hhht!” I cried and wiped my face, and cried and dripped on my program, and then I cried and tried to wipe my face with the hand holding the candle. I was a mess.

The lights came up too soon, and amid cries of “Merry Christmas!” I made my way back out into the dank and darkness. I was unsettled, still, but for a different reason, and I wasn’t lonely any more. There was something with me that hadn’t been there before, and I drove home, taking my time, enjoying the lights and the quiet and the warmth of the Christmas promise.