The longest night

 

Winter solstice.  The longest night. 

Just before Christmas. 

Night is darkest just before dawn.

Today was emotionally heavy in tiny ways. 

I passed out teacher gifts and school party snacks on the last day of school.  But the back of my mind wondered -- should I have done more?

I wrote up the details for the message I'm going to share at Christmas eve worship. Will it be good enough? Could anything be good enough?

I had hurried to finish Christmas preparation so I could be calm and low stress in the days leading up to the holiday but I worry over and over I'm going to forget something.

A friend came up to me to say she needed to check herself into the hospital to help with mental health. 

I remembered I'm not going home this Christmas. 

I texted with a stranger, a woman from a Facebook group in part of.  Her child is lonely and wanted some kids to hang out with so we arranged a playdate.  But my mind wheeled with questions - will she judge my house? My kids? 

Zander, who had bounced back from surgery,  took a step back and started clinging to me because he didn't feel good. I expected it,  but it still added to this long dark day.  

I took my medicine. It made me tired. 

I watched home alone 6 with the kids. You guys,  there's a home alone 6. It's a little out of control. 

A friend texted that her dog,  who is her full and complete baby,  ate something poisonous and she will be on vigil this long night.

Everything in me longs for the break after Christmas.  The wintering time where we can pull back and hide in caves. Being slow and intentional this year means I'm not crazy right now and I realize that being crazy and busy fills my mind and keeps me from holding all these longest night thoughts in my head. 

But... in my intention..  I'm calmly laying next to the Christmas tree,  writing this melancholy post a few days before Christmas. I feel small against the big need of this world. I do every year at Christmas. I give all the gifts, bake al the baked goods, show up for al the things and still I feel like it's not enough.  I'm not enough and somehow I should have found a way to do more.

In nights so dark, our small lights feel like they are swallowed by the vastness of the night. But in this darkness, the light of the world is born. 

But more than that,  before there was light,  God was.  God dwelled in the darkness. And in the darkness of this night,  God dwells with us. We do not need to wait for the light. God is with us,  even now. 

Week 3 - love is messy sometimes

 Love is messy close up. 

I write this post while i wait for Zander who is in surgery to get his adeniods out.  

It is, i think, appropriate to write about love. I felt it as i signed paperwork about risks and benefits of surgery. From far away, it was no big deal. Just a quick little fix. Close up, it's a little more raw. There's a quick extra prayer as i sent him away holding that image of him going through the swinging doors to the ER and knowing it's silly to worry but that pit in my stomach hoping nothing goes wrong.  

The more I think about Christmas, the more I want to unwrap the shiny package and hold on to its raw unfiltered holiness. 

I see all our nativity scenes - silent, holy under the tree. Eternal replicas of Marys instagram reel. There may have been one moment in that holy night that looked even a little bit like our statued figures. But I'm guessing the rest wasn't anything Mary would have posted to her Facebook page. 

I remember my own post birth selfies. All the chaos of labor, delivery, and recovery. In that crazy swirl of love and pain and exhaustion, I had one moment smiling at a camera with the newborn that i shared with the world and that I can look back at to remember.   

But what I remember is not the moment when everything was all tidied up for a photo. I remember breathing silently in a dark room through waves of contractions as they rolled over me. Especially the moments where i was alone and my thoughts turned so deeply inward i was barely more than breath, living second to second in each moment as i waited and worked to birth new life. I remember slimy, squirmy, warm babies trying to latch for the first time as i cried and tried to catch my breath after labor. I remember eating a double cheeseburger and peeing the most amazing pee of my life. I remember everyone leaving and sitting up and looking at the new little person, studying them and holding the amazement that the world now has then in it. Wondering who they were and wanting to know them. 

Mary has her own birth story. Unique as the story that brought each person into the world. It was certainty messy and painful but it was also rich and joyful in ways that only she will ever know. As she stared into the tiny, wrinkled face, her eyes met the word that existed before time. I'm certain... no matter how many hymns we write or sing, or how shiny we try to make Christmas, it will pale those raw, nsfw moments where humanity met God face to face in a manger. 

Love is messy and when we try to bundle it up into a tidy package for Instagram, we lose something raw and beautiful.  

It's sitting with a child day after day, hours and hours of struggling and feeling that swell in the soul when they finally read for the first time.  

It's 19 straight days of phone calls at 3am talking that friend back from the ledge... and knowing you'll do 20 more days if you need to.

It's thankless years of cleaning up after and caring for people who seem not to even see you and wondering if you even exist at all. But choosing to get up the next day and do it again because there is an unbridled selflessness that compels you to keep all the trains running.  

It's all the prayers poured out because you feel so powerless and yet, love will not let you lose hope. 

Choosing love again and again is powerful and sacred and holy. It is wild and it carves spaces in our hearts that can hold unspeakable joy. 

In the healing...

In new beginnings...

In prayers answered...

In tight hugs or belly laughs.

Sometimes. It is love just being love. Nothing else and there is joy. 

At Christmas, we want to capture all this wild love and joy and put it in a bottle and look at it. We want to tame it, schedule it, decode it, replicate it and sell it to the world. We want to make unblemished memories to fill pages of photo albums. 

But perhaps, just as we are. Leaning into the mess we have right in front of us is exactly the way God would want us to celebrate this holiday. In fact, leaning into the mess of a broken world and coming to people just as they were is exactly what God did. Nothing else needed. Love begetting love. For its own sake. 

When I touch that. I can let go of all the tinsel to meditate on the fact that Jesus had new baby smell. That he arrived in the midst of scandalous family drama. And that random roadside truckers, farmers and hillbillies were the first lips to witness the gospel. I start to connect with what love can look like. 

The first Christmas was probably a hot mess.... because love, close up, often is. May the Spirit grant the determination to choose love - how ever hard, uncomfortable or unworthy of social media it may be.

Wait... hold on... Zander is coming out of surgery. 

I walked into the room. Two nurses holding him as he thrashes incoherently. The anesthesia wearing off. All my worries of weekday could go wrong melt away as i take over holding him. For an hour i use my strongest mothering arms to try to soothe him and keep him safe. Finally, he's calm enough to strap into his carseat and bring home. Screaming the whole way, i forgo drive through lunch and B- line to the house. We snuggle into bed and spend the next few hours watching YouTube as he wanes between sleep, agitation and coherent wakefulness. My house is not getting cleaned today. Dinner might be take out. We'll see how it goes. 

 May you find Christ with you in whatever hot messes that are in your life and know that he is at home there. It is where he chooses to be. With us, as we are, right in this moment.  

Amen. 

Week 2 - Peace in our vulnerability

 "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" - Philippians 4:7

I went to a Lutheran grade school for a few years and I'm not sure if I memorized this verse near to Christmas or if all the talk of "heavenly peace" during Christmas juxtaposed the two on top of each other but for whatever reason, the little girl in me has always associated this verse with Christmas. My young brain, added two and two together, decided that Christmas was the day the prince of peace was born and so it was the day that peace, that passed all understanding, entered into the world.

Jesus was born into an Israel that was as heartbreaking as it is today. We read in Matthew that after Herod hears of Jesus's birth, he kills all the baby boys under age 2 and the young family flees to Egypt for safety. It is eerily familiar, revolting and heartbreaking. Even when after the Prince of Peace was born, the world was not peaceful. 

A few months ago, I saw some social media quip that if God is wholly good, all powerful and all knowing -- then why do humans suffer? Either God is not all powerful, or not all knowing, or wholly good. It is a difficult conundrum and yet, I wanted to respond with a 4th way -- what if God enters into our suffering? What if God offers us peace and wholeness in the midst of of strife and brokenness? It is such a hard concept to get my mind around, but ever so rarely, I grasp at it. There is a mystery in the peace the passes understanding. Our minds cannot understand how peace could be born in a manger in the middle of a bloody and broken world. Where is the peace in that. And yet, peace, like a blanket swallows us whole. In moments of tragedy, uncertainty, change and upheaval, there can be a peace that falls like snow silencing our inner voices and allowing us to trust into the suffering. I had a pastor once say that baptism was safe until we go way out into the water and let ourselves be taken under. In faith, there is access to peace that passes understanding and God like a blanket wraps around us and walks with us in all of our humanness.

Ok... ok... that's heavy and also... I'm busy with wrapping gifts. I could use some peace that passes understanding in all this holiday stress.

I got you.

This whole reflection started because I'm hand-making a few gifts this year. I wanted to be more intentional about my advent and so I made space for it. I made space to be present with people and to be present in all the tasks that come up in the passing of this season -- the teacher gifts, the white elephant at youth group, the classroom parties, gifts for nephews -- it goes on and on. I was surprised as stress creeped in and I wanted to blame in on lack of time. But as I reflected on it, I don't think the churning in my stomach was from lack of time.

I think it was from vulnerability.

When I rush and don't spend too much effort thinking about it, I can gloss over the vulnerability of gift giving. I can pass off rejection of a gift as "well, I didn't put much time into it." or "this is stupid capitalism" But if I'm going to be mindful. Then I don't have that excuse. My gifts don't have to be mindless capitalism if I choose for them not to be. But, I don't get to hide from "is it good enough?" "are they going to like it?" At the very core, gift giving is an exercise in vulnerability. It is an act of knowing someone and being known. And, as we prepare gifts for the people in our lives, it can become evident how little we know them. And kids... they are so honest. They don't mask it at all. If you don't know them and you don't get them something they like, they will tell you -- until their parents shut them up and teach them how to mask it properly like the rest of us.

But then, receiving gifts is a vulnerability. It is to see the reflection of how we are known by the people in our life. What they think of when they think of us. Sometimes that doesn't reflect who we are and we feel un-known. Isolated by gifts that do not speak to us. And some part of me, is disappointed when a gift doesn't fit. When I'm not known well enough to get a gift that sparks some joy in me.

This rub reveals so much about us and I think its a hidden reason why the holidays are hard even when there isn't any real "reason" why they "should" be. All our dark side and light side competing -- our selfishness and our generosity. Our  hope and our disappointment. Our vulnerability and our shame. As I've allowed myself space to slow down this year and process all this in myself, I find myself back at the beginning of this post -- peace that passes understanding.

Peace that passes understanding isn't reserved for just the "heavy" stuff. The tragedies, major changes and upheaval that comes from living in a broken world. But God is also with us in our little moments of vulnerability. God enters into our vulnerability in the same way God enters into our suffering and in this we can open ourselves up to peace that passes understanding. God a blanket that wraps around us in all our humanness -- silencing our inner dialogs and lowering our blood pressure. 

May peace that passes understand you fall like snow around you and silence all the competiting dialogs, may it wrap you like a warm blanket and may you know that God is with you in your vulnerability, in your suffering and in your humanness.

Advent - Week 1 - Hope or....morning sickness

I follow a writer / artist named Scott the Painter on Instagram. He wrote a book called Honest Advent that really grounds the incarnation in the human experience of pregnancy, labor, birth and caring for an infant. I really appreciate this raw peek into spirituality in this season that tends to be highly polished. It's like we take social media filters and apply them to a picture of the birth of baby Jesus a glow to soften and safen the incarnation of God among us. 

Advent has culturally become a time to look at lights twinkle and build memories with our families. To frantically hop from one event to another and build a list of all the things to do and to get done. When I was a girl, I was taught it was a time to prepare for baby Jesus. Like cleaning our house, we clean up to be ready and worthy of our savior who will gift us with his presence. I don't think there is anything wrong with any of this but as I've gotten older, I've realized Advent is so much more when you scrub past the shiny veneer. 

A weary world rejoices. 

Advent is a weary time. A pregnant time. A dark time. 

The longest night happens just before Christmas. 

And so... in this first week of Advent we light the candle of hope. 

In the midst of war in our world. In the midst of a creation that is groaning under the weight of our endless consumption. In the midst of the "little problems" that happen in our own lives that can make us feel trapped, alone or sorrowful. In this darkness we light a candle and name it hope. 

Hope that God will come and dwell among us.

And this is where I appreciate so deeply the mediations on pregnancy and birth that Scott the Painter writes about. Because Mary, the first to experience the incarnation of God among us, experienced it as morning sickness.

Could we not also feel spirit of God as a bought of nausea?

I have.

Letting go of who I wanted to be, to embrace the life God has given me comes with a certain amount of churning in the pit of my stomach. In fact, almost any time I've prayed for wisdom and found a conviction in my heart on a direction, that conviction has been accompanied by some feeling deep in my soul that could best be described as morning sickness. A battle between my will and Gods. A churning of fear, uncertainty, longing, joy, hope and conviction that get all mixed up inside me that feels uncannily like those early days of pregnancy. A miracle has happened and yet all I can do is lay on the floor of my shower and wait for it to grow inside me. 

May peace be with you in this season of Advent and may the holy presence of God dwell near you -- be it a serene peace in a quiet night or the churning deep in the pit of your stomach as you choose hope in a dark moment. Christ is coming.