“What will you be doing for Advent this year?” a friend asked me. She knew that for the past three years, I have engaged in an Advent Photo-a-Day practice, reflecting on a prompt word each day and capturing it in a picture.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It hurts too much. My heart is still tender from the grief of my dad’s passing.”
In previous years, the season of Advent had been a source of joy and consolation for me. I looked forward to the anticipation and the gentle, dark time of waiting. Advent had always been a time of finding hidden beauty. This year, however. This year was different. I couldn’t even think about Advent without tears welling up and my chest feeling like it had exploded. Or maybe imploded. Oh, what a raw place.
My brain tried to understand why. What was it about Advent that surfaced this grief? Why did I feel like running away from this season – or skipping it all together and fast-forwarding to the new year? Why did this overwhelming pain feel so threatening? And why was this pain tied to Advent, of all seasons? Wasn’t Advent about waiting for Jesus’ coming – and coming again? And wouldn’t that mean Advent was also about waiting for reunion with all the saints? Couldn’t I find consolation in that?
My brain, however, could find no satisfactory answers. But I did not have to understand my feelings to honour them.
I sat down to design our family Christmas card. “JOY + PEACE” the template said. JOY. How could I wish others joy when my soul was smothered by a heavy mantle of mourning? I clicked on the text and replaced it with “LOVE.” It felt incongruent to do otherwise. Some people would argue that joy was from a deeper place and that it could be accessed regardless of our life circumstances (or maybe that’s just a little voice in my own head). But Freedom and Grace assured me that there will yet be a day when I can wholeheartedly wish others JOY. This year didn’t have to be it.
While grocery shopping, festive music played from the speakers, “It’s the most won-der-ful time of the year…” I surprised myself by bitterly re-wording the song in my head: “It’s the most diff-i-cult time of the year…” In the past, I’d been aware that Christmas wasn’t jolly for everyone. And now I found myself in that place.
I thought of all my friends who would also be facing Christmas this year missing someone dear. I thought of friends with deep unmet longings for a child who would feel the sting of the story of a virgin conceiving. I thought of people whose lives felt opposite to what the common expectation of what this season should look like.
My friend, Leslie, sent me a book last year called “Watch For the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas” (affiliate link). I found it on my shelf and took it down. Even though I don’t have it in me to engage creatively with Advent this year, perhaps I could at least listen to the words of other saints. Maybe this Advent would be more about being. Maybe it would be more like the 400 years of silence between testaments than a neat and numbered countdown to JOY.
Another online friend of mine, Abby Norman, recently wrote a wonderful piece called, “You Don’t Have to be Thankful on Thanksgiving.” I’ve adapted it to also mean: You Don’t Have to be Merry at Christmas. She ended with this, “You can be happy and sad. You can be full of joy and sorrow. You can be surrounded by people you love and also a little bit lonely. There is room for you, all of you for the holidays. Give yourself the gift of your whole self this year.”
This is what I’m choosing for Advent this year. Permission to be as I am. And inviting God to show me the Light as the time comes.