I spent the first day of my Christmas break milling a decent-sized log from a red oak tree that died at camp last spring. I would love to say the process involved a lot of fancy equipment and a state-of-the-art sawmill. But I am a writer and camp director, and my toys reflect the economics of both. So instead I attached a mill fence I found in the barn to my chainsaw and fired it up. A few hours later, I had a stack of 1 1/2” planks.

And for all that hard work, I’m rewarded with 12-18 months of waiting.

For the non-woodworkers among us, wood has to dry before it’s ready to use. Since I don’t have a kiln, I have to “sticker” the wood, using small blocks every 18 inches or so between planks so that there’s good airflow between boards. I need to paint the ends to help avoid cracking, and then in a year or so use a moisture meter to check how much water is left. Once it gets down to 12% or so, I’ll take what I plan to use, plane it down, and store it indoors for a few weeks to bring it down to the 6-8% ideal for indoor projects.

It’s going to take some time and effort. It’s a process.

So is Christmas.

Every family I know has some Christmas tradition that requires more time and effort than we put into other holidays. For my mom, shopping for gifts beings in September. My wife spends at least a week baking. Decorating the house can take days, and cleaning up for company requires full-family mobilization.

Like I said, a process.

The good news is that effort can elevate our sense of meaning, as this great note from Eric Hoke illustrates. The gratification for a project that turns out just so is directly related to the amount of work that went into it. The more I pour myself into something—whether an oak tabletop or Christmas—the more likely I am to feel good about it when it’s over.

Then again, the reverse is also true.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the last Christmas we spent in the McGovern House, our home for a decade. We had nurtured an incredible community among the college students we worked with there, one that elevated all of us and helped us thrive.

And then it was gone.

I remember standing by the fireplace one night after everyone else had gone to bed. I put my hand on the stones to feel the warmth and tried to be grateful—was, in fact, grateful, even though that time of life was ending. Denise and I had invested so much in the people we worked with, and in turn had received so much back.

Still, the loss of that community hurt, and sometimes still hurts. Denise has written eloquently about it in her Discovering Life in Loss blog. The effort we put in helped create a synthetic family—not in the manipulative sense in which my employer used the term, but a real family, in which people offered themselves to one another in love.

For most of us, family—however we may define it—is the biggest project of our lives. By some combination of birth, circumstance, and choice, we are given a small set of people with whom to share our time on earth. We shape them, argue with them, nurture them, care for them, mourn them, love them. And they in turn do the same for us. It’s never easy, but most of us do it at least with tolerable success.

When family goes right, there’s nothing better. When it goes wrong, nothing hurts more.

If there’s a way to be certain how a project will turn out before it starts, I haven’t found it yet. I’ve been confident about things that failed miserably, and near despondent about others that succeeded beyond my imagination. The wood in my barn may twist and crack and end up useless. It may dry perfectly and turn into the most beautiful thing I’ve ever made. The outcome is only partly in my control, and I have to wait a long time before I get any real clarity.

So goes the battle.

The first Christmas away from the McGovern House was the bleakest and most uncertain of my life. We were in limbo, renting a dilapidated house and waiting for our future to emerge. I had just taken a new job in another state that I felt compelled toward yet totally unqualified to do. Many of the friends we thought we had drifted away to their own concerns. I hated almost everything.

But it was also the start of a new process. In the years since, I’ve had to remake my professional identity and much of my internal landscape. It took a tremendous amount of effort simply to engage in the first Christmas in our new home at camp. This year has been easier, if imperfect. I don’t even try to imagine what the next will be.

What I do know is that joy requires hard work and waiting, and always in unpredictable proportions. That hope is the glue that keeps life from falling apart, and that absent certainty, love is the best we’ve got. The outcome may be impossible to predict, but if those are the materials we have to work with, I like our chances of ending in a good place.

Merry Christmas, friends. May light always find you, no matter how dark the night feels.