Hey There.
It’s been a hot minute…I won’t apologize we’ve all been going through a lot. I’ve had some thoughts stirring inside tonight and I just need to put them down somewhere. Good thing that’s what this is for, as bad as I am at using it.
The last post I made was pre-pandemic, back in February shortly before the world fell apart. It’s wild to look back at that and think of how much the world has changed in 10 months, think about how much I have changed in 10 months. I hardly find a reason for a recap, we all know what’s happened – between murder hornets, COVID-19, and the craziest social and political unrest I’ve seen in my lifetime…I bet we can all agree the murder hornets were the worst. All jokes aside, the world has change and I won’t even try to pretend for the better.
I want to address that I don’t know all my audience, or maybe I used to know you but we’ve grown apart, or maybe we just went to high school or college together. Because of that I’ll give a brief overview of me and what I do. I’m in my second year serving as a children’s ministry director for a large Methodist church in San Antonio, TX. I graduated in May of 2019 with a Masters in youth ministry and a calling to help build faith sustainable for a lifetime in young Christians. I’ve been on a journey through God’s grace and grief since I lost my soon to have been fiancé Cameron in February of 2017. And since Spring Break of March 2020 I’ve been trying to figure out how do you spread the Gospel to children and Family through a computer and TV screen. Sometimes I camp, sometimes I do photography, sometimes I escape to Colorado and pretend like I live there. But most times I’m serving God and families growing to be more like Christ.
You may be wondering why I haven’t written since before the pandemic. Well, it’s simple. I’ve been silent since spring because the hurt is just too big, the words are not enough, and it’s been desperately hard enough just making it each day from sun up to sun down. I’d like to say I’ve thrived during this time, found new strides in ministry and taken the cup half full view on circumstances. But I haven’t, not for the majority of this season. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been joy, there’s been laughs, there’s been plenty of moments to remind me I have so, so much to be thankful for. But for over all this season, I’ve been surviving, not thriving. And that’s okay.
Maybe someday when I have a clear head to reflect on these past months I’ll have some stories to share and wisdom to impart from where God has revealed God’s self – because I promise it’s happened. But that’s not what I want to talk about tonight. This week has been particularly rough with work and just continuing to put one foot in front of the other. I’ve sat back and asked the question so many times why are we still doing this, where’s the hope and what’s even the point. This is particularly elevated as we are quickly approaching the season of Advent, a season of waiting in expectation of the coming King. I assume many of the people who find themselves in similar positions as mine probably feel like these past 9 months have been a whole lot of “hurry up and wait”. Yet here we are finding ourselves in the Liturgical period of Holy waiting with anticipation.
So to be clear, I freaking love Christmas. I’ve always loved Christmas. I used to be one of those crazy people who starts listening to Christmas music the day after Halloween. Since I was little Christmas has always been my favorite time of year because of traditions, family gatherings, gift giving and receiving, and obviously the celebration of the birth of Jesus. I will absolutely claim that there was a new appreciation I found for Christmas when I started seminary, and especially in the years following losing Cameron, Brittany, and Embree (if you don’t know who those people are go read my last post). Christmas 2017 was a rough one, it had only been months since losing Cameron, and then Brittany just a few days before Christmas. Honestly, Christmas won’t ever be the same but I’m finding a new beauty in the pain and struggle of it. What I found the last few Christmas’s, through having experience despair, hopelessness, sorrow and grief was actually a new found joy for the season of celebrating when Christ came humbly to walk among us. I remember driving to church the first Sunday of Advent 2018 when I finally let myself listen to some Christmas music and just weeping at words I’d sung all my life. Joyful, Joyful we adore thee, God of Glory Lord of Love. O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. O come let us adore Him Christ the Lord. Joy to the world the Lord has come.
Y’all when I say weep, I mean WEEP. I know I’ve written about it before, but when you’re in the darkest pits, it seems the light of Christ shines all that much brighter. It sounds simple but the thought of My God, Creator of the Universe who holds everything together and spoke everything we know into being chose to be born to this world in humility as a baby boy. The Alpha and Omega, “Jesus Christ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8) The start of that story of how God so loved the world, so loved me, that He gave His only son is what we start celebrating with words like “joyful, joyful we adore thee” and “O come all ye faithful”. It was in those moments I realized I’d lost that emotional connection to why we sing those words year after year after year. And oh man, emotional did I get.
Fast forward to tonight. I haven’t had a Friday without a plan in weeks so today got a little boring when I made it through my chores that I’d been neglecting for way to long. I decided I needed a little joy in my life and I wanted to see Christmas lights. I used to live in New Braunfels and have always loved how beautifully they dress up for Christmas and decided I’d go see if they had lit the square up yet. So I hopped in the car and took the long way to New Braunfels. The lights were in fact on but there were so many people around I decided not to stop because COVID – but it was a pretty sight. I haven’t listened to any Christmas music up until this point yet so I decided to turn some on. I have a great love for anything Michael W. Smith Christmas so I started my favorite album for the drive home. Within just a few notes, that tight throat, weepy feeling started creeping up – but it was met with a bitter thought of “Joy? What joy is there to be found when the world is in the state it’s in.” Experiencing that emotional expression of the joy of Advent almost felt inappropriate, distasteful, and wrong in light of the state of the world currently. I really wanted to run from that feeling but instead I turned down the longest possible route home and decided to sit with it, music turned up loud.
Bitterness has been my battle this seasons, for many different reasons. I found the feeling of bitterness and joy in battle tonight. Obviously, there’s been the lingering doubts of “how can we call God good when so many people are dead from coronavirus?” I’ve asked endlessly where is God in all of this, and I know so many of my brothers and sisters in ministry are simultaneously asking themselves that questions as well as guiding young believers through asking that questions as well. “How could we possibly celebrate Christmas at a time like this” I found myself asking. I even in a phone call earlier today joked about just skipping it all this year. Where I sit tonight at the end of the night, and where I would like to explore over this season of Advent is why more than ever we should celebrate.
We are in a period of waiting, and we’ve been waiting since March. Waiting for curves to flatten, waiting for spikes to happen, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for election results, waiting for test results, waiting, waiting, waiting. Have you forgotten as I have the holiness that is waiting, and the biblical narrative that is characterized by waiting? I believe that the whole Bible is one continuous narrative that points to Jesus. When you look at the Bible, think about how much waiting there is in those stories. We wonder where God is in all of this in 2020, I think of the over 400 years the Jews waited on the Lord in Egypt, wondering when God would answer their cry. I think of the disciples after Jesus ascension, waiting for His return. I think of the Israelites wandering in the desert, waiting to enter the promise land. I think of all those characters who waited and waited, and never received what they waited for. This is where we find ourselves, soon to be liturgically in a season of waiting as well as literally in a season of waiting. Think of all the Lord might reveal to us during this period of holy silence, holy waiting.
Lord hear our cries.
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