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.