Advent.

December 12, 2023.

Today I have really no words and at the same time words feel eager to spill out. 

On one hand there’s the “this would’ve been us” or “we would’ve been doing this” or “this should’ve been something we were preparing for.” The “could’ve beens” of today fill my mind and spirit while my body is still recovering from what actually was, what actually is, today. 

Usually, the Advent season brings a wave of energy and joy, as I reflect on specifically the women in the Christmas narrative who prepared and labored the way for the Christ child to be born. There is always something so rich about connecting with Elizabeth or Mary who were given such front and center roles, with their pregnancies and voices and wombs that carried the world’s salvation and liberation. After birthing my own son, I felt that our stories were inextricably linked– I had come to know the labor pangs of new life for myself.

This year, as I greet a period instead of active labor, and take progesterone instead of prenatals, or look to make more work goals for the month of January instead of maternity leave plans, the primary emotion being carried in my spirit is a little bit of jealousy and a level of sadness. While I really overall am doing okay, and I know in my bones that God has never left me these last few months, the contrast of my reality (and probably several others’) with the Christmas narrative feels too potent to go unnamed. 

I know that Elizabeth waited so long and that Mary’s pregnancy and life was no walk in the park either. I know the beauty and theological truths that this story holds for even folks who still wait, and even so I felt left out. 

I felt angered at the murder of the innocent children that had to come about because of Christ’s birth. I felt like the advent story allowed women to identify themselves with the plight of Mary and Elizabeth, enlarged in their waiting, attending to the growing child, feeling the tugs, pangs, and baby John and Jesus leap in their wombs like when you get to feel those first little flutters.

But instead of solidarity this year, it felt more like longing and desire. 

Instead of being enlarged in my waiting, instead of attending to a growing child, instead of making a go bag for the hospital and preparing Theo to be a big brother, instead of feeling a baby leap in my womb, not one but two left my womb through traumatic miscarriages. I’m preparing and recovering, not from birthing a new child, but to get more labs drawn and from the anxiety and grief of losing trust in my own body. Instead of humming and hawing over the pregnancy and birth announcements booming this season, I just think back to the hospital room where the ultrasound technicians looked with concern at a mass of cells with no heartbeat. 

I felt left behind by the Christmas story this year, frustratingly so because I know that the Christmas story is so much more than blessedness coming to those with occupied wombs. I felt–I feel sometimes left behind by the season in itself, like there is a part of me that is still lying on that hospital bed, coming to consciousness from the anesthesia after my D&C, just perplexed and in a fog asking myself, what just happened? 

Okay, I promise this whole thing is not going to be all sad. I’m a real joy at parties these days. 

If you’ve read any of my writing before, you’ll know I’m a bit fan of the “and yet” statement. I find deep meaning in the paradox of life, sorry not sorry. So, here it comes. 

And yet. And yet and yet and yet.

Isn’t it a beautiful, terrible, mysterious, awful pleasantry that we receive the Christmas narrative, that we read and respond to any story in our inspired text with a unique lens each time we encounter it? 

As much as I truly love the intentional details, the women, the baby, the liberation of the lowly, the silence of the men in the Luke narrative to allow for the women’s voices to be centered, the ways the narrative invites a deep freedom from oppressive systems, and a king that looks like no other, I feel like this year, the grand narrative is where I locate myself.

What I mean by this is that this year, with so many unmet longings and desires, no miracle baby in hand, I stand in with the people of God who held weariness and hope for salvation to spring forth from things that once seemed dead. 

Isaiah 11:1 says, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” 

From only a stump, something worn down, seemingly dead and dinky, a king – David would arise. From David’s lineage, another king would come. Even though the Assyrians had attacked the nations, and the House of David had fallen and failed, the promise of still-coming-kingdom reverberated off of the carnage of a sacked city. The people of God had been diminished to the tiny remnant because of the persecution and wars taking place. And just as loud as the brutality and horror of wars, the softness and gentleness of God broke forth in a vessel that asked to be taken care of and nurtured to fruition. 

The kingdom Jesus inaugurated grew out of the roots of mass chaos, weariness, longing, and suffering. It grew out of a scared teen mom, a group of terrified and grieving Jews, a stump – a once dead, and seemingly abandoned chunk of earth. 

This all came to fruition as I sat in front of a ragtag bunch of Christ-followers who came to receive healing and hope during a Blue Christmas service that I’ve been able to plop together the last few years. As I read my own words of grief and longing and lament, and looked out to a seemingly unconnected group of people, all that I could think was, this is how the kingdom of God came to be.

We practiced lamenting this year, by tearing long pieces of fabric for the things we needed to cry out to God for. Sitting between the lit Christ candle, and the candles people lit in honor of their own grief, I closed my eyes and listened to the synchronized tearing of fabric that rippled across the room. I held my own fabric in my hands, letting my fingers run over the frayed edges, reminding me of our collective brokenness and need for Immanuel. 

We started our time in lament. To end our time together, we took communion. To get to hold up the elements (I was able to hold the juice) and look grieving people in the eye as I told whispered to as many of them by name as I could, “this is blood of Christ shed for you” is an experience like none other. To get to remind them of a longing that will be met in the coming of Christ again, and the hope of God with us is a moment I hold with sacredness and honor. 

I believe with my whole heart that it was a group of people just like this one– aching, longing, hurting, willing themselves to trust in the God of hope and the promise of an Anointed Savior – from which the shoot came out, and the reign and rule of Jesus began. 

Just as much as the details of the Christmas narrative are beautiful and important, may I not lose sight of the grand vision of the incarnation for the collective people of God. 

As far as Advent, I think longing might be the point. This year I am reminded how desire and longing can easily go alongside of hope. Longing is not bad, it does not mean anything is wrong with me or with you, it just means that we join in an ancient tradition that knows that longing can only be truly met and held in the person of Jesus – who even as an infant, had longing and desire and needed to be held himself. 

I don’t know if I’m making any sense, maybe you’ve stopped reading by now, but if you haven’t, thanks for sticking with me. 

I am horribly, terribly grateful and I also lament that you and I and many others know the pain of longing and desire going unmet. 

May we lean into the grand narrative, may this longing lead us to hope and may that hope expand our vision, widen our view, and pull us out of whatever dark room we sit in and even for a moment, into the light, into the story, into the promise of Immanuel.