The advent season is coming, it is probably the one consistent time we welcome over a month of waiting and anticipation. We press into the reminders each day with stories of how he came as a baby to take on that chasm between us and God and shatter it for all eternity. We go back to the beginning of mankind, hear all there struggles in the same dark and broken world, and look for the sparkling seeds of hope that redemption is coming. We hang the ornament each day, waiting for the Jesse tree to fill up.
This season I wait on God’s slow unveiling of where and what he will lead our family into. I sit with the discomfort of not knowing. I resist the urge to plant my own roots, conjur my own plans. In his sweetness he gives me small glimpses of what he is doing in this waiting. A growing child is learning to navigate there world of childlikness with a pull toward adulthood. Learning to balance, learning to communicate, learning to reach deep into relationship for reminders of truth and wisdom, learning to say “I’m sorry”, and learning to give beyond themselves. Another is wrestling with purpose and identity, how the two are linked but so different. Learning to surrender to God’s molding. Those are just a couple glimpses of what he is doing in our family.
And then there’s me. What does he have for me in this waiting? Glimpses of his rebuilding trust, and rebuilding a trellis. Where the wild untamed vines of my heart can be guided toward purpose and in lean deeper to love and learning to be, not do.
In the soft glow of the red splashed throughout our home I find comfort in the tradition, the emotion, that symbolizes the cost of my connectedness to God. I ache for connectedness to family, that is on the other side of the world, in a different climate, different culture, different space. For there presence in our families lives, for the chance to “just be” alongside them.
I wait toward that day of remembering that that baby brought us all together in unity with our creator, and I continue to wait more until that day when I will know separation no longer. Where a weary world rejoices.