blessed are we who have sat down

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

today i am waiting. today i am weary. 

it is raining. the world here is wet, a brown and leafless wet, a maybe 40 degrees stark tree, white winter sky wet.

zoe had a seizure on monday. she was at school, i was at work, we drove 2 hours, thankful that it wasn't 2 long plane flights anymore. i witnessed again, the world trying to interact with her challenges- the ways they get it right and the ways they don't.  sweet zoe, another thing to add to her list.

rose is in a season. adoption is always complicated. and my boys, bless them, strung between, still finding their way as third culture kids in the overly busy american life when they would rather be in uganda.

mike is upstairs, quarantined away with covid, mild thankfully because he's vaccinated, but as i work with the elderly, he's keeping his distance.

all of it feels heavy. like i'm constantly checking in on 5 other people's emotions and physical well being. and i wonder where i am? i wonder whether in this season i will have time to breathe. what is normal? our new normal seems to keep expanding to add more stressors, my muscles feel continually tighter.

today's advent reading ended with something that resonated- (thank you Kate Bowler)

"blessed are we who wait for You in the desert of our longing and isolation, in the wilderness that is this our present struggle. 

blessed are we who have sat down."

the desert of our longing and isolation 

yes. despite how wet it is outside, i feel inside a desert of longing and isolation.

the wilderness that is this our present struggle.  

yes. at times i feel lost in this wilderness of present struggle. 

but unlike past seasons where i may have sprinted through, or treated it like an escape room, a puzzle to solve my way out of, somehow in this season, by God's grace, i have sat down.

sat down in solidarity. 

sat down in surrender.

but not in hopelessness. 

i have sat down to join my life, my people, where we are, hard as this season is, and this is the awe of advent.

God sat down too.

we are all seen in our longing, our isolation, and our wildernesses and God sits down in it with us. just like He sat with me in the basement of the hospital waiting for jude to get out of the MRI as an infant. just like She speaks in the tree tops when the wind whips. just like in the silence of this moment. 

Christmas is about when the divine sat down with us in solidarity and in Love. 

today i wait in remembrance, seated in my life.

advent time

 

 

 

 

this may be the longest time i've gone with out posting.  i started to write in september again, then in october and then november but always interrupted, never finished and here we are now in december. coming on Christmas. advent. favorite time. 

i still feel a bit like i'm living in two places, heart split. uganda creeps up on me in the strangest of places. standing in line to checkout at a store, i'll flashback to the TMT market-images fire before me, the faces, the products, the light coming in through the door, the sound of tape strapping the boxes together to put groceries in. or i'll open my mouth to speak spanish to a patient and luganda will fall out instead. or i will long for tea time to happen at work. for prolonged eye contact when people greet and sincerity in the "how are you?" and i find myself missing the follow up "and how is the family?" but i no longer feel the need to tell everyone i've just moved from uganda, or to bring out my ugandan drivers license as my id. my identity is not wrapped up there- but my heart still is. always will be. 

i'm here now. for now. for a long while.

my sister just bought a farm. it looks amazing. 18+ acres in north carolina with an old farm house and out buildings. there are ponds, raised beds, fenced areas and wild.

there is something about connecting to the earth, getting grounded, planting oneself that calls to some part of me, a part that must be central to being human. like we are meant to til soil, nurture seedlings, watch things grow and then harvest. the cycle of the seasons, of life. 

a part of me wants that. i see the beautiful pictures of the house and all that land and the dogs running freely and i can hear the peace and quiet. i can hear the call to be still. the invitation to experience what can grow inside of you when you tether. 

but.

i have come to know myself and i am not one to be tethered. i roam. 

the only place i ever wanted to tether myself was to east africa and even there i wanted a long lead so i could travel all around and then return. 

now we have entered the season of anticipation again. expectant waiting. of longing. of hope. of light. this crazy world, madly spinning, so much, too much, all the time. 

we are invited to pause now. darkness comes earlier. lights in windows. candles on tables. 

a month of preparation for Christmas. to remember the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless Love of God. joining us. knowing us. sharing in the spinning chaos. not to condemn the world but to reconcile, to mend. to heal. to unite. to Love.

we sit in the darkness of december with our little lights.  

we wait expectantly for Love.