When I’m being honest, I don’t know how to do this.
The lights hang outside and the star sits atop the tree and childlike wonder dances through our very house and we talk about the birth of peace itself yet I still just can’t even.
It’s too much, as Ellie says when I ask her to clean up. It’s just too much, and now I know how she feels.
My three babies run wild and free in the house, turning the Christmas tree into a forest to explore, Nativity scenes as actors in their great battle of good versus evil, snow globes as worlds to enter into as the air sparkles with blizzards all around them.
Their magic inevitably carries them into the kitchen (a small one, not much storage, cramped quarters, I think in my not-grateful moments) as I cook, deeming me their “safe base!” and I shoo them out “Babies! Scoot! Go defeat your mean people somewhere else!”
They run around and their Daddy squeezes my waist and I sigh: They don’t know yet. We have to tell them. They need to know there’s something bigger going on this Christmas.
It’s going to break their hearts.
And so we eat dinner and talk about our highs and lows and then do Advent for the night and then it’s time. We sit them on the couch and take a deep breath and tell them that something big is about to happen, but they need to know that it’s a little bit sad.
In January, we tell them, earlier in the month rather than later, Daddy and a whole bunch of other soldiers will head to the other side of the world and need to stay there for a long time.
In January, we tell them, Daddy is going to be gone for a whole lot of sleeps. See, my baby girls, when you’re a Soldier, you love your country and you believe in freedom and you stand beside the soldiers who stand beside you. We tell them that as a family, we believe in freedom and we believe in loving others and we believe in Daddy and because of that we need to share him sometimes.
We tell them it’s going to be hard and we can be sad but God is still good and we are strong and we love each of them so much.
Does anyone have any questions about what we just shared, we ask?
Brennan raises her hand immediately.
“Well, I like Mommy a whole lot but I love Daddy more.”
Well, #1: Not a question. #2: What a weird way to kick me when I’m down.
And this is our dance of Advent. The days until Christmas nearly parallel the days until Lane’s departure and as we count down the days to the arrival of one man we love, we simultaneously count down the days until the departure of another.
It’s about this, but also, also- it’s about that.
And it’s just too much. This back and forth pendulum nearly does me in. The joy and the peace and the relief of the Messiah intertwines with the sadness and the pain of our hard and it’s all just too much and I just don’t know how to handle it all.
And of course, there’s the fractured country and the fractured world and the attacks on school campuses and the bombshell news from a spouse and the lost job and the sick baby and the lonely season and the news cycle which spews out fear.
It’s just too much.
It’s never just about one thing though, is it? Something bigger is always going on. There’s always this and that, the heavy and light, the good and hard. There’s always two ways to see things- through light or through darkness.
Truth be told, my default mode is fear. Hope is hard for me. Hope, I have to work for, hope I have to fight for.
Maybe you do too?
Because maybe your spouse is one who just dropped the bombshell news, maybe it’s your baby who is sick right now, maybe it’s you who is lonely, maybe you just lost your job or your loved one or everything.
God, I tell him in my darkest of nights, you just feel relentless at times. God, what in the world is happening, I ask? God, I whisper- the scandalous Pastor’s Wife with big questions and big doubts and big feelings- are you even here?
And the one that was with God in the beginning and through him all things were made and who shows us the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, came into this world and made his dwelling among us, casting out darkness.
Immanuel. God with us.
We await the birth of a baby; we await Messiah.
It’s this but it’s also that.
We wait for Lane to deploy; we behold the newborn king.
It’s this but it’s also that.
We feel broken, fractured, unsure of what God is doing; we hope.
It’s this but it’s also that.
And so what in the world do we do? Anything but despair.
Because see, if there is no God, then there is no hope. But right now we celebrate when love came down and flipped the story. Right now, we rejoice that Jesus was actually born, and hope is actually here.
It’s easy to keep our eyes on the ache, to notice the dull pain beneath every interaction and to get sidelined by sadness. Here’s what hope does though: It allows us to notice, to believe, that something bigger is going on- and we then begin to fully live again. Even when it looks like the story’s over, even when it looks desperate and, well, hopeless, we can cling to our scrappy, gritty hope that was born when the baby was born in a manger and participate in our own redemption story.
And so when there’s an ache that pulses underneath Advent, I sit alongside you as we seek the presence of the one who promises us everything when we have nothing.
Baby girl, he says, don’t you know I’m doing a new thing? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
As you anticipate Christmas and the ache throbs yet you cling to hope, take a cue from the Christmas story when it wasn’t just a baby that was born.
I promise you- always, always- something bigger is going on.
xo
Thank you so much. My words aren’t adaquate to thank you, your husband and your children for what you are doing so that we can be safe and free. I am praying for you to have peace right now and through every single step of your journey. May our Good Father be there to love you and help you every single day.