I have been struggling a lot throughout this past Advent season.
Advent is a season in the church calendar that is set aside for waiting on the coming of the Lord. This short season of waiting ends in a celebration on Christmas morn as we celebrate Emmanuel, God with us. Often Advent is talked about in this joyous and hopeful way. It seems light and maybe even magical that we are invited to four weeks of intentional hoping. Hoping in the incartnation of Jesus Christ. I have felt that light, blissful hope before. It is beautiful and necessary. There should be joy in our waiting.
But this year was just different for me. This was my fifth year of being intentional about partaking in the season of Advent, and it was my hardest yet.
This year I found myself a little bit angry about the waiting season.
I felt desperate and needy, like waiting for Jesus just causes agony.
Come Lord Jesus
Come Lord Jesus
Come Lord Jesus
This has been the rhythm of my heart over the past couple weeks.
I think the best way I can describe it is as if the needyness and the agony of waiting somehow stretched my spirit to its breaking point. And in the painful process of begging the Lord Jesus to come and be born in my life, to come and bring intimacy, my spirit was shredded, no longer maintianing its nice, neat form. And in that shredding I found myself in a familiar place, a place of tenderness.
A tenderness that is so sensitive that touch is painful.
That is where I am at at the end of this Advent season.
I hear my tender Abba inviting me to come to him.
"Come with your shredded spirit.
Come and fall forward."
I want to fall back on my butt and land sitting down, on my own, away from any touch.
Falling forward seems painful these days.
I hear the truth of grace and love.
I notice His faithfulness.
I desire.
