the entire past fortnight has been one bloody mess.
between coming down with some mysterious sickness, overwhelmed by stress upon stress, caught in the middle of family feuding, facing a future world that feels falling apart, and crying hangovers and splitting headaches every morning.....those that say that Thanksgiving and Advent are the most wonderful time of the year have obviously never met mine.
i am usually the Christmas Grinch - never in the Christmas spirit, always burdened by some strange heaviness around the Advent season; and when I found myself scheduled to sing at church two weeks in a row, (Christmas carols no less!), I groaned and flipped off my laptop in dismay.
too standard, too rote, too every-single-year-and-it-means-nothing-to-me apart from wishing it were all over already.
Save the carols for after thanksgiving, once well into December! Save the carols for the day of Christmas itself, because with all the heart-heaviness in our world today, the ideals of peace-on-earth-goodwill-towards-men seems fanciful at best, and downright impossible at worst.
and while we sing about a newborn babe there is a new president in the White House and old ugliness taking new shape in newest conflicts and protests, and instead of hearing each other out we draw division lines and blame and silence and shame those who think differently than us, and I stumble into church of an early Tuesday evening, already dark outside, and wearily sink into a seat, heartsore and voice sick, and we run through carols and more carols, run through the set, and i run out of heart.
then the worship leader sits down to the piano, fingers flirting with black and white keys. black and white. no gray. starkly divided between right and wrong and republican and democrat and east and west and racism and acceptance and fear and hope and all the division in our world disparages me.
Yet the notes of my favorite carol ring out strong and clear against the late November stillness, as the crisp snow falls, his voice indescribably longing, and the tears spring unbidden to my eyes when all i want is for the coming of Christ and the end of this season that feels like a sham when tensions run so high.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel....ransom us.
my heart contracts in longing as the music builds and wells and suddenly drops; a promise, a plea, and a prayer.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come.
God-with-us will come. God will come to us. God will come. He will be with us. He will walk with us, and talk with us, and comfort us.
so where is He?
where is He every night for the past week, scream-sobbing into the darkness that it's all just too hard? where is He through Thanksgiving tears and Advent tears and trying to smooth things over between my brother and boyfriend and the lighting of the Hope candle in a world where I can barely find the hope to go on?
where is He a week later, again at church, rehearsing through a fever, and I glimpse the pastor's wife through the transparent sanctuary doors, stringing bright lights on the giant Christmas tree in the lobby as we begin again O Come O Come Emmanuel, but where is He?
Where is He?
and late that night lashing out in angered frustration that I can't find Him, and I don't know who I am or where I am going, and the whisper comes that what if the reason I haven't seen Him this Christmas is because I simply haven't been looking?
if the pounding of the years has pounded out my old starry eyed hope in the story which made Christmas night, and the jaded disappointments of life have hardened me to the point where I don't bother looking for Him because i don't think He's there
But what if I started....looking?
After all, the babe in the manger didn't come looking for the wise men. or the shepherds.
they went to seek Him.
and if you shall find what you seek, then what if I spent this Christmas actually seeking Him? searching for glimpses of Emmanuel, God-with-us in the messiness of the mundane? in the hectic, in the stress, in the streams of shoppers shoving past the poor homeless man on the corner, or the massed worshippers Sunday morning dozing through the sermon?
because if Emmanuel is God-with-us, and if Christian means God-in-us, then He is with us when we are with each other, and He will touch us through one another, and reach with human fingers again to wipe our tears and teach us to live again?
so what if I went looking?
Would He show up?
....oh and would He ever.
it is amazing what you see as soon as you start looking for it. It is amazing where you see Him as soon as you start searching for Him there.
He is everywhere.
In the twinkling eyes of a five year old, brimming with pure joy as the first batch of gingerbread cookies emerge from the oven, and sticky kisses find their way onto your cheek as sticky fingers twine themselves round your neck.
in the tall seventeen-year-old, practically a man, scrubbing dinner dishes (your rightful chore) after a day of his own studies, shushing children, and running errands so that you might rest, because he's heard that you aren't feeling well.
in the tenderness of the man who calls you his girlfriend, who grants you your first night in over a week without crying yourself to sleep, by reading Isaiah over FaceTime until you fall asleep.
in the generosity of your grandmother, the thoughtfulness of your sister, the laughter of your brother, the warmth of your mother, the wisdom of your father...
in the shining lights which dance through the night, mirroring His arrival, illuminating the darkness and declaring hope
i am learning to see it
i am choosing to see it
Emmanuel. God with us.
God is with us.
We only have to look.
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