The Long Walk Home

Two years ago in a fit of mania brought on by son1’s birth and much sleep deprivation I sewed together this advent calendar. I think it had something to do with wanting to do something lasting for our children and also wanting to cling tightly to my love of advent in the sea of unknown I found myself in.

Last year son1 didn’t really know what was going on and we attempted to put bible verses in for each day and, as I recall, an attempt to listen to a bit of the Messiah each day. The best laid plans didn’t work and I found many unopened Bible verses when I got it out this year.

Son1 is getting hold of Christmas for the first time this year. He looks at the lights and the trees and decorations and knows they are about this new word in his vocabulary. He made an advent star with the characters from the nativity in Sunday school this week and can name them all with much glee. I’m excited to try and help him deal with the point of it all each year and want to do all we can to make sure it doesn’t get lost in the midst of the getting of presents. I still struggle with this massively and I want to help our family enjoy and embrace this season whilst holding back on the greed aspect. I realise that starts in my heart first.

Anyway. Back to the point. This years advent calendar fits with the simplicity needed in these weary days. Husbandface had the genius idea of getting a 24 piece nativity jigsaw and putting it together over the month. I loved it, we found a jigsaw puzzle that met the description and as our son loves puzzles so much we now have a slight meltdown each night that we can’t do it all at once. Sigh.

It remains a good idea and as son2, and no doubt chocolate, get added over the years I hope it makes up part of our traditions as we look to the mystery revealed at Christmas of the word becoming flesh and making his dwelling amongst us. As we long for the day when the puzzle pieces of life will finally fit together.

(Nice cheesy ending eh 🙂

November has a certain quality to it. It’s grey, grey, grey. The days are short and dark, the clouds make everything look bleak and dim. Even though you know there is a bright ball of blazing light out there behind them, it’s really hard to convince yourself of that reality. Once a week or so the clouds part and there are bright blue skies, crisp mornings and wonderful sunsets painting the skies with pink, green and gold in the late afternoons. But for the rest of the days it’s slogging through grey.

It’s a time of year where the grey has a different quality to it. January and Feburary greys are just bleak and depressing. November gloom somehow seems to wrap itself around me in a comforting sort of way. The skies reflect some of the grey bleak slog of life right now through the daze of sleep deprivation, toddler tantrums and newborn crying. It’s that old literary device ‘pathetic fallacy’ at work, where the surrounding weather reflects what’s going on in the story. (Hardy and Dickens love a bit of pathetic fallacy…). I like this kind of gloom. It makes me feel strangely safe.

I feel that way because I know it has an end. Coming around the corner of this weekend is the wonder and waiting of Advent. The lights are blazing in the skies around our cities. Christmas is coming and we love to bust holes in the darkness with the wonder of light and The Light come into the world which the darkness doesn’t know what to do with.

November gloom gives way to Advent light and hope. That’s why I can take a bit of bleakness and that’s why we can make our way through the gloom of this season of our lives right now. We might not see much of each other as we stumble around our children’s tears. We might not be able to connect with each other or friends as we stare blankly at the walls but there is Hope with a capital H living here as well.

The gloom of now is tempered by the knowledge that light is coming, in small ways by knowing that babies eventually learn to sleep, evenings will be ours again one day and that our boys will grow up, different seasons will come upon us. The gloom is also tempered by the knowledge that the Light of the World stands with us in this present darkness and holds onto us. Our walk is not dependent on our ability to pull ourselves together and keep going. It’s dependent on His strength holding onto us, helping us hope, helping us trust in the coming dawn each day and the coming final dawn.

For that is what Advent is all about, a coming final dawn when light will conquer darkness forever. When the gloom will be gone and we will be finally at rest. When the Light who came will come again. I long for the dawn light each morning as I stumble through another night of little sleep. I long for the ultimate dawn.

And so until then.

We look for the light. We look for the Light.

Your correspondent, meant to write about the weather, ended up writing about Advent.

My second thought from labour that apparently I should share (go talk to Karen Jones if you disagree) is on swearing. I generally don’t swear (except late at night when the baby is still crying and I’ve lost all perspective). Husbandface doesn’t like it when I do. Binface loves it when I do which leaves me in all sorts of dilemmas but for the most part swearing doesn’t really happen.

I’m not a fan of swearing generally, it’s a fairly lazy form of self expression, it’s not the best use of the language we’ve been given and God isn’t such a fan of it. There are times though when I think only a well timed swear word will do. Bono’s use of the f word in the Rattle and Hum video in Sunday Bloody Sunday is perfect. (There’s an 80s reference only my brother will get) It can be comedy genius or the best expression of pain and loss.

I also think it can be employed to express extreme relief. At the end of labour, when the boy came out and I realised I wasn’t pregnant anymore, all I had to express the relief, the wonder, the joy and rapture was the f word. Over and again I said, fuck me. All the time apologising to husbandface for the swearing. But oh my life, no other word worked in the same way to express this inexpressible feeling. That feeling when the pain stops, when the race is over, when you’ve got to the top of the mountain and the glorious view stretches out before you. Breathless I cried in joy and wonder and the f word expressed it best.

My issue is: Will we say this when the new creation is ushered in? Creation is described as being in birth pains. Waiting for the day new life will be born. Imagine the relief on that day. A day when there will be no more pain, crying or mourning. No more being hurt or hurting others. No more sickness. No more death. A glorious crazy wonderful birth. I might let out a few f bombs on that day but maybe I’ll more naturally cry hallelujah to express the wonder of what is happening. Maybe.

Here’s some of that vision in Romans 8 in The Message. It kept me sane in the last few weeks of waiting and in the early stages of labour. Joyful expectancy of total relief one day. I still wonder what words we’ll have to express that final wonderful relief when this world gets to give birth.

Romans 8- 18-21 That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.