Advent Week One
Time marches along and we are in Advent. We went to both colleges and heard their Christmas concerts. It felt like we were still parents of “dependent” children and important part of their lives. Both were so happy we were there and that we could give them some attention.
The season puts so much off until they can gather at home. Making cookies so that I don’t eat them all. Making lefse when the oldest finds time from her full life, with my second born too far away to participate.
I don’t know what I imagined this time to be but I don’t think it was this.
When people ask “how empty nesting is for me” and I say “hard”, they usually respond with “they remember that”. Or, “I couldn’t wait when I could do whatever I wanted.” I want to follow asking “Did you wonder who you were anymore, when you were left alone?” “Who was that you found after you weren’t a mother or father needed by their children?” I wonder if anyone wants to hear those questions much less answer them. I am not sure I want to, either.
Advent Week Two
Advent. To wait with anticipation. I have waited like a child with excited anticipation in years past. Today I wait with more reservation, perhaps dread. Will what is ahead come first with pain before the joy and relief. And, hope. Like when I delivered my four children.
Luci Shaw reflects on Advent in this way,
“Though the protracted waiting time is often the place of distress, even disillusionment, we are counseled in the book of James to ‘let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete.”. Pain, grief, consternation, even despair, need not diminish us. They can augment us by adding to the breadth and depth of our experience, by enriching our spectrum of light and darkness, by keeping us from impulsively jumping into action before the time is ripe, be true the “fullness of time.’” (“Rediscovering the meaning of Christmas- God with Us”- Pg. 78)
The world seems always more angsty in this time. We want calm and we want it to be bright. Yet, this season comes as days draw shorter and nights longer. We have to wade through this time with patience. It is for the fullness of ourselves that comes through the child born thousands of years ago.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope (Psalm 130).
Advent Week Four
Four days until Christmas. Hard to believe.
The boys are home and they are a welcoming energy in an often-uncertain place. Uncertain what to feel or think, what to hope for and what to turn from.
So, it is Christmas.
I wonder what it means to feel like it is Christmas. The anticipation is quite different for me now. I am hoping for not holding on to expectations on how it should be. And, hoping to rest in that soft, warm glow that hovers in the night after a baby is born in a stable, with two parents wondering what is next as the arrival of shepherds and sheep remind them that they are not alone. In that experience is community. And, there is God.
