Advent of Discomfort and Hope

I remember that time, when we went to a live outdoor nativity around the corner from our parents’ houses. I remember walking around in the crisp cool night’s air.  I remember taking turns holding our daughter and then watching my husband hold her, as we walked along with our little family, and my in-laws.  We all marveled at the scenes, the  twinkling lights,  the real people and mostly pretend animals.   

As we progressed along the path, anticipation grew, until we  eventually got to the last scene.  (Which, really was just the beginning.)

The part where Mary and Joseph were there, by the manger with baby Jesus.  

Mary had just delivered a promise, the angels were around her, singing. 

That night, in that space, had a different journey.   My body started delivering a different promise, not into life, but instead, into the hands of God. 

Somehow, reflexively, maybe, or timing, maybe providence, while watching this advent, my body began the long awaited process of miscarriage. 

(I know this seems a funny story to share. And in fact I hesitate in some ways.  But I share because I know someone might be there right now -in a story like this. or worse than this- somehow, someway, too.)

Some might wonder at the irony, the timing, the discomfort and loss at the nativity scene. But isn’t that the whole point?

Sometimes advent- His coming- can look like something coming to an end.  Maybe it feels like your own dreams. Or even His. There are a lot of ways that a dream can die. 

But hold on. 

I want you to know that you’re not alone.  That Christ is there too. 

At the very same little corner church, that very same night, while my journey started towards one loss, my heart had a different one, too. 

See, after we finished outside and headed inside I ran into a friend from high school. 

This outstanding man, with the same quiet strength that he’d always possessed, had recently buried his wife -at Christmas time, no less, a few years earlier.  I’d been to the funeral, the church decked out in its festive holiday finery and I and many cried their eyes out.  The loss earthside felt thick, even while the gain of heaven caused for much celebration.  The weight of a life well- lived, for God’s glory,  hung heavy and great in the room.   The baby girl she died delivering brought both a sense of  great hope and great loss. all tangled up together 

Here now he was, a couple of years later while I was holding one child and loosing another.  He stood before me with his two kids and not his wife, and I wondered how he was doing, how he was standing.  

I am tempted to say it was a painful reminder of loss. And it was.  But it was also a palpable reminder of Hope.  

It’s almost as if the loss I was carrying responded to the  loss that he had carried too.  

But with Hope.  

While my heart ached for his,  I could even almost see what any of us could lose, were maybe were even loosing.  I felt the pangs of mine own, yet they lessened and eased for a moment.  They’d ebb and flow later.   But a wave came in that night air, that had nothing to do with the cold.   I saw what he still held, and what held him. Christ. And  the Hope in me leapt, even as part of me died.   

I remembered in my bones, that Christ came, and none of us ever have to be alone, again.  

It tempered the feelings of agony, there just a stones throw away from the manger.   I could palpably feel tender Hope-eternal.  My friend and I, I could see, were both still surrounded by His overshadowing grace.  As I began a walk through a valley of a shadow of my own, I knew I could get to the other side.  

  I hugged my husband a little tighter, leaned in to the family that surrounded me. Even as my body suffered a loss, my heart gained by remembering what it still had.   The children  there with us, the  family right beside us.  There would be new lives and loves later,  for both families.  New additions, quite impossible without the losses.

But right there in that Christmas scene there was hope. 

Every Christmas story has its own share of discomfort or questions, “could this possibly be it?”  Not everything is the way that we planned it or hoped for or even expected.   But everything happens for this reason.  To birth something new in you.  

I just want you to know,  whether you’re in season of Hope or birth, loss or gain, mourning or dancing, you’re not alone. Because that baby who came in humility and humanity, He is there- for you. 

Advent comes, CHRIST comes, surrounded by some unpleasant circumstances or unforeseen obstacles. 

He comes to grieving hearts and aching minds.  He comes when you can’t see up from down, right from wrong.  He comes in the middle of the night. when you’re all alone or smudged in a messy middle, wondering what happened, where your dreams went and disappeared to.  He still comes.  That Christ child.   He still comes.  For you. 

And as annoying or crazy as it sounds, I can’t shake the feeling of this.. remember to look around, and see the love that surrounds you now.  The friends, family, angels and miracles that surround you there right now.  Still, just a stones throw away from grief and mangers, hope above hope He still comes.  

Merry Christmas, traveler.  He comes.