When your Advent path seems crooked

Even the decorations are hanging crooked already, the bows of the Christmas tree hanging low with ornaments, wilting before the big crowning moment on December 25. Maybe it's the new job that has me tied in knots right up until Christmas Eve. Maybe it's the late wrapping of gifts. Maybe it's how my children seem to associate "Christmas" more with Grandma and less with our own home. Everything about this Advent season seems to have come out wrong.

I've been on a crooked path for as long as I remember, and I guess my expectations of my myself are probably getting in the way. Shouldn't I be used to this by now? Failing expectations? The Advent devotionals so carefully prepared gathering dust on the kitchen island. The baking sheets that have yet to see any cut-out cookies. The Jesus we lost from one of the Nativities earlier in December still unfound in the chaos of the upstairs that hasn't been cleaned for months. My bedroom, the sanctuary of the home, buried under a pile of work clothes and undone grading.

Before the tears can fall, a whisper comes that stills my soul. Advent has been crooked since the very first Advent. Mary on a donkey, uprooted and on her way to a foreign town. Arriving to a town already full to capacity. A birth in a barn. Was any of this what she expected after that Holy visitation by the angel and the filling of her womb with the Holy Spirit?

We are in a constant battle to get it right. Get it right with ourselves, our children, our neighbors, those we witness to. Wear the right clothes to church, sit down and stand up at the right times in the service. Remember how to take communion here at THIS church. Follow the protocol, follow the rules, follow the followers who seem to be following better than we.

What if the Gospel points in a whole different direction? What if following the Gospel is following a path as crooked as my own this Christmas season? What if we're all supposed to be following down a thin mountain path, rousting along on the back of a lowly donkey, heavy with promise but laden with exhaustion and a feeling that this can't possibly be the WAY? What if the end of the path doesn't lead to a gleaming pile of gifts perfectly wrapped and chosen, but three gifts odd from three odd men who don't speak our language? What if the birth of Christmas is not some hushed moment around the perfectly stoked fireplace where all the children sit at rapt attention while the passage is read from Matthew? What if it's a smelly, painful, bloody birth onto the hay?

If He came to confound the wise with simplicity, came to bind up the broken-hearted, came to make the crooked paths straight underfoot - maybe I haven't missed Christmas this year at all. Maybe He is showing me a new layer of how crushed expectations sometimes reveal the very everyday miracles He's chosen for our blessing. Maybe this year it was more about helping a student on one of the last days of Advent, or sharing the Gospel in my office with someone who doesn't yet proclaim His name. And maybe, really, it's more than any of that: maybe it's me He's cradling along the crooked path, redeeming, revealing, reconciling. Maybe through all the crookedness He's drawing ME close to whisper, "You'll still find me in the most unexpected places." Like the very bottom of a bruised heart ready to admit that I haven't got it right, I can't get it right, and Advent is empty unless I'm leaning on the only One who can carry me through.

Come, thou long expected Jesus, 

born to set thy people free; 

from our fears and sins release us, 

let us find our rest in thee.  

Israel's strength and consolation, 

hope of all the earth thou art; 

dear desire of every nation, 

joy of every longing heart.

~Charles Wesley, 1700s~

Down comes the mallet

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;

you were very dear to me.

Your love for me was wonderful...

II Samuel 1:27

No one can heal the hurts and brokenness of life like Jesus can. Pointing out the superficial layers only intensify the alienation and lack of love that is causing the problem in the first place. Grace gets to the root rather than excusing and ignoring the behavior. It’s a tough job being a part of a community that is tied together by love rather than by performance and appearance. Grace always comes at the cost of self-preservation. Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. (Galatians 6:1-3) from Grace Is For Sinners by Serena Woods

I love how God's lessons for me fit the seasons. Cancer treatment in the bitter cold and desolation of November. A hot summer full of frazzled brain waves and the storms of seizures for my sweet baby girl. Now a December laden with the silence of snow is full of silence...a phone that's stopped ringing, an empty e-mail in-box and a shrinking list of friends on Facebook along with a shorter than usual stack of Christmas cards. I am on the bitter end of the Christian community and it is eye-opening. I have been here before. It makes me cry out for mercy and beg God for justice and for grace. Revelations 22:20 is wrung from my heart strings and my trembling lips as I hide my breaking heart from my kids in the shower: Come, Lord Jesus, come! 

I learn afresh that the more we are alone in this world, the more we are cast on the God who longs for our friendship...finding new sweetness and fullness in the silent conversations of the heart, the quiet of the days, the stillness that is a home with four walls and your own children. He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children (Psalm 113:9). I vacillate between peaceful joy in this quietest of Christmas seasons, and heartache and brokenness as I am cast daily onto the Rock. A heart that is beaten is tender though - like the mallet to the steak, every blow breaks down the threads of these heartstrings, and Jesus binds them up in a soft soul beating quietly in His presence once all the tears have been spilled.

Astigmatism: reveals

The shape of my eye changed because of a physical hardship: I hit a toilet with my head, with my eyes open, and my eyeball got smashed.  I don't know yet if the effects are permanent, but I do know one thing: it has changed my focus.  Literally.  I focus my camera just as I always have, but because the "perspective" in my eye itself has changed, what I see looks...different.  There is more blur.  Almost like I am less attached to the subject.  Yet more art?

I've admired a few photographers for years: the one I love most is Amy Glover, first a professional alliance, then friend, then the woman who discipled me, and now fellow artist.  The allegory between art and soul is so complete, it's almost too good to be true.  Just as I've followed the "perspective" of her soul, that complete lack of anchor to the here and now, the throwing of herself completely toward heaven, laying up treasure only there...now I also follow her art, and see things in her photos I try to emulate, to this point very unsuccessfully.

Just as her life conformed to Christ through searing loss, so Christ draws me closer through all these trials that He says to count as joy.  My eye changes shape, and headaches persist, and I am brought to my knees.  But here, on my knees through the very results of this painful event - hitting that toilet with my skull - I am changed and the treasures I lay up here are less, and the treasures I lay up there are more.  It even shows in my photos: a blurriness, lightness, whiteness, that wasn't there before.  It's not something I could do by myself.  I tried and tried.

Here, on this terra firma, toilets collide with heads and eyes are smashed and blood vessels explode; brains are infected, and electricity goes wild, and seizures steal synapses (moth and rust destroys, and thieves break in and steal).  Even on this cursed clod, I see His redemption as He shows me beauty through the smashed eye and in the seizing girl and the life of chaos and calamity.  Yet, in heaven, with each day of bent knee and bowed head, with each day of silently acquiescing and calmly submitting, the rubies there in heaven pile up (where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal).  Whether it is

not cursing the pharmacist who dispensed the wrong medication and caused my blood pressure to drop and my head to hit that enameled toilet tank; 


admitting I failed my comprehensive exam because I didn't write well enough and refusing to resent a committee that did me justice; 


praising God for each of the 1,000+ days I've had with Amelia as I scoop vomit from her throat and beg that she be spared, refusing to curse Him for allowing this seizure, this pain...

I send my heart to heaven along with the treasure I lay up there.  I loose my hold on earth and eyesight, dreams and jobs, children entrusted for now to my care,  and children I dream of someday caring for.  He knows, and He knows best.  I only see darkly, as through glass.  I thank God for the times He gently changes my perspective through days and weeks spent quiet in study; and for the times He sends change abruptly, through emergencies and sudden events.




::
I completely realize that I was wrong yesterday.  Apparently, I still need to write, even in a week packed with academic work.  :-)

Inside there is silver

Yesterday was another day wasted spent at the doctor.  My headache isn't improving yet, and my double vision and the glowing aura in my vision became markedly worse yesterday, probably because I am spending so much time staring at a screen to revise my comprehensive exam.  The eye doctor gave me good news and bad: my double vision is due to a brand new astigmatism, thanks to changes in my eye shape from the fracture in my eye orbit and the impact to my eye.  Based on his findings in my eye 2 weeks after the fact, this doctor believes I hit the toilet with my eyes open and sustained impact right to my eyeball itself (even I, the oblivious and impervious nurse, find this somehow quite gross).  So I need glasses, for short distance stuff especially, at least for a few weeks.  I am actually quite excited about this.  I found the most retro frames I could, although after some websearching, I am quite disappointed that I didn't hold out for Shuron's Nulady in crystal brown.

Oddly enough, I think I look great in cat-eyes.  If I am a life-long eyeglass wearer, I think I will make it my personal style and go to the trouble of buying vintage frames (I assume it will be harder to get lenses made for them, but who knows?).  So...that is the good news.  Believe it or not.  The bad news is that I have several bubble-like areas on the retina of my right eye, which may detach over time.  The best possible scenario is that they will heal over time and I will have no long term damage.  The glowing aura is from the spots of retinal detachment currently present in my eye, so that would go away if it heals.  The worst possible scenario is that I may go completely blind in my right eye at any time, and quite suddenly.

Once I get through my initial skeptical, pessimistic and irritated reaction (that "old sin nature" rearing his ugly head within), I usually quickly see the silver lining.  It's easy to see here: for some reason unknown to me, I do not have a particular dominant preference for one eye or hand over the other.  Although I have difficulty writing with my left hand, I can shoot, bat, cut, dice and slice with my left, which is unusual for a right-handed/right eye dominant individual.  As far as eyes go, I have no difficulty shooting left-eyed, nor taking photos that way.  If I do go blind in my right eye, it won't be as difficult for me to make the switch as it would be for most people in their 30s.  The other part of the silver lining: the amazingly awesome eyeglasses I get to wear...and just sometimes!  I don't even have to commit to full-time use.  Which is really sweet!

All this came flashing through my mind today when I watched a video a cancer friend had posted, Natalie Merchant's mid-90's "Wonder".  I remember identifying strongly with the lyrics of this song when it came out around the time my heart condition was getting so bad in high school.  I searched for videos of the song to post here, and came across a potentially disturbing one...the original official music video.  If you'd like to think more deeply about the meaning of the words, and ponder whether Merchant's perspective is godless or mocking Satan, watch the original video and comment.  I'd be curious to hear the reaction you have.  For the purposes of this journal, I posted a less confusing video...a beautiful acoustic rendition of the song accompanied only by her own piano part.

Doctors have come
from distant cities
just to see me
stand over my bed
disbelieving what they're seeing

they say I must be one of the wonders
of God's own creation
and as far as they see they can offer
no explanation

newspapers ask
intimate questions
want confessions
they reach into my head
to steal the glory
of my story

I believe
fate smiled and destiny
laughed as she came to my cradle
"know this child will be able"
laughed as my body she lifted
"know this child will be gifted
with love, with patience
and with faith
she'll make her way"

people see me
I'm a challenge
to your balance
I'm over your heads
how I confound you
and astound you
to know I must be one of the wonders
of God's own creation
and as far as you see you can offer me
no explanation

Taking flight

He stands tentative.  Opening his orange beak wider and wider as I walk closer.  He's more skittish than the other shore birds and gulls.  Doesn't like to be close to other people.

He pulls his wings up high and gathers air under them and lifts off.  Just parallel to the ground at first.  Almost as if he might not have it in him to stay aloft or climb higher.

Finally, he starts to make upward progress.  His beak still hangs open in fear of me, as if by talking to me he might scare me further away.  His wings are hinged and the lines go straight, then up  to gather more air, then hinged in two, a 90 degree angle as he swoops it away underneath himself.

Finally, closer to the waves, he catches the updraft.  Here his flight becomes beautiful again, the lines of his wings are poetry in motion and he closes his fearful beak to ride the wind upward, totally free of the fears he felt on the shore.

:::

This series of photos, this interaction with the apparently quite tentative Piping Plover on Kiawah Island, reminded me so much of our decision to take flight to the ocean.  Tentative and fearful, angular, difficult...we gathered the wind with our wings anyway and headed for the updraft over the beach.  Now here we are, and the flight is beautiful and days poetry in motion.  So glad we came!

24 little hours

This morning I am less sure who won the toilet vs. face battle.  They are doing a repeat CT and x-rays of my facial bones, mostly looking for brain swelling and jaw fractures.  I'll post again later with the results.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory. In his name the nations will put their hope. (Isaiah 42 & Matthew 12)