Advent, week 2: Peace and imperfection.

“I was rounding the corner to the new year in every way. Promise had surfaced in my life. We’d had small circumstantial changes that had translated into fragile hope. But hope was hope. There were no gradations. I hadn’t this sort of quickening of spirit in years.
Morning had broken.
For a few days, at least...
I wrapped my fingers tighter around hope. This will be another instance of seeing God’s goodness, I thought with the buoyancy of my new perspective.
But how quickly we let ourselves feel cursed again.
That night in the hospital, my age-old fear surfaced again like a stain. “Forever” beliefs dissipated into familiar thoughts: Of course. This is just how my life goes. Why should I expect it to be different? If I want something, it will always elude me.”

—pg 84-85, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet by Sara Hagerty

I feel this way, and I also fear this way. 

The path of hope the Lord has set me on these past few months, the last months of 2018, has been filled with glimpses of his goodness. And I find myself believing for it even when days grow long with unexplained pain and fatigue (despite the help of medicines), or when work gets overwhelming enough until my body just stops and takes a reset day like yesterday. I still get little things done, but I still rest with a marathon of Gilmore Girls. 

The fear, of course, comes onto the path as if it is a welcome, naturally expected guest. A friend instead of the foe it is. Fear, when conversations on don’t progress. Fear, when I worry about all the things I’m not getting done for work. Fear, when my house piles up with dirty dishes and laundry and I struggle to feed myself. Fear, when I wake up after 8 full, uninterrupted hours of sleep still feeling like I could sleep for a few more. Fear, when I can’t seem to even digest what I’m eating. Fear, when friends face medical things also unexplained.

That’s how I feel, anyway. Most of which can be attributed to stress or even maybe a little depression coming through the cracks of fatigue and restlessness and this dark-at-4:30-season. Or maybe even just the fact that I haven’t stilled myself in multiple days, filling my time with friends and ignoring warning signs of sleeping in too much? Yeah, I think that is a part of it. 

So maybe today I can recommit. Recommit to this “rounding the corner” to 2019 with promise and light and hope leading the way. Recommit to the buoyancy of new perspective and lean in to the new words he’s speaking: redemption. writing. 

Clearly, he’s got a head-start on me. Because here are 1200 more words than I’ve written in months, just responding to a book by which he is forcing me to slow down and savor. In which he’s speaking, repeating the words that fall has held; words that winter will savor deep in cold, hard ground; words that lead to harvest, spring’s harvest—somehow. I don’t know how. I can barely believe myself. I cling tight to hope in one hand, fear sometimes still under the fingernails of the other fist. 

But I’m gripping so tightly that life feels a bit limp. I’m choking something out of it. That something is peace. 

Because, as the second week of Advent slows us down to see, to believe: peace is more than a feeling. Peace isn’t something we make happen. The second candle of Advent is simply lit, not forced into existence. We cannot practice peace—we must practice other things that make room for it. 

I get up to light my coffee-table candle. It’s not really an Advent candle (next year’s goals), but it’s a start. A simple way to say to myself, “Peace is welcome here. Peace is not something I have to make up. Peace is something that starts when room is made for it, and I’m making space. Right here, at 5:44 AM, tired and groggy though I may be. Peace is coming, here.”

I refill my coffee and make way for peace.

I resettle into my chair, my sacred space that I’ve missed this weekend, and say, this space is a space of peace that I need to be in every morning. No matter what.

I reread my "@ the Anchor" sermon notes from Sunday, the second Sunday of Advent, on the theme of peace, and make way for it.

Turns out, I need more than hope. I need peace, too. I tend to treat hope gruffly, with grabby hands and swollen eyes. Peace comes in to still my hands, to calm and loosen them, to rub my tired eyes and say, “Peace. It is enough. Be still, with me.”

One of the biggest barriers to peace is looking for validation in anything/anyone beyond him + this story, Wendell said on Sunday.

And my heart really hears that today. 

I want, and I often seek, validation of my hopes and dreams. I want signs and wonders that point me, nudge me even, towards those hopes, towards the culmination of all the Lord & I have been dancing towards.

I want, and seek each day, validation of my work as “good enough” (aka, let’s be real, perfect). I want this so bad that I work on sick days and after hours and slowly it has become more of a temptation away from being present than I want to admit. More of a reality than I let myself see. 

I want, and yet do not seek the way I should, validation in Jesus. That’s what I’m really seeking in these other things. I want the Lord to send those signs + wonders that say, “Yep, this is the way, walk in it.” I want the Lord to honor my reality of living for the perfection and “good enough” drive at work. I want him to perfect me, and therefore make everything perfect.

But Advent teaches me imperfection. 

Advent is a perfectly timed story, yes, but in the most unexpected and seemingly imperfect of ways. Perfect timing that will take years of a baby crying, learning to talk and crawl and walk; years of just being a child, growing into a imperfect {we-kinda-think-you’re-crazy} family, learning a trade, practicing that trade, long before one day he steps into the dirt road to say, “This is the way, walk in it. Follow me.” 

(Sidenote: Jesus remains perfect [without sin] during all of this, yes. But remember that he was tempted in every way. He went through the things we face. Including adolescence. He gets it. And I’m sure he was at times frustrated by the weird, seemingly imperfect way in which this whole story was being written too. He knocked over tables, remember? He stayed at the Temple when he was supposed to go home.)

Perfect timing takes a lot of imperfect days. Perfect timing takes a lot of patience and waiting. Perfect timing happens in imperfect ways. At least, that's how it all seems. 

The peace of Advent comes to say that this imperfection we feel, in our growth, in our validation-hungry souls, in the timing of it all -- it's all a part of the story. The bigger, greater story that truly is and always will be "better than all we can ask or imagine." It was with the first Advent. It is with the every day advent. Jesus is still, always, coming into our stories. Invading with his Spirit send to sanctify us and that is happening in all sorts of imperfect ways that test our patience and resolve us to hope. But the Advent story shows us the way. The Advent story validates all our feelings, but, but, but -- it doesn't leave us there. The story keeps going. The church calendar keeps moving forward. And so do we. Imperfect though it may seem and sometimes just is (because we are imperfect); the story itself and the God nudging us forward towards himself and his purposes through it all--that remains perfect. Perfect through, and maybe even because of, the imperfection. 

Peace be with you, friends. Not despite, but t h r o u g h the imperfections of the days and seasons in which we make space for it.