Winter Doings

There are many, many winter doings to record, but it's late--almost one this morning--and I want to be a busy one tomorrow, mailing out packages and baking. I hope to finally finish my decorating tomorrow, too.

I've been struck this year at how Christmas is such a poignant time for many people--a hard time to be away from family, those who are absent for a short while and those who are gone for a long, long time. To those who suffer in this season, I bid you peace and hope you find unexpected joy.


My heart feels full of the many good people I love and who love me in return. Soon Martin and I will celebrate ten years of marriage, and soon we will mark Merry's 7th and Elspeth's third birthday. This season is so packed with celebrations that it is tricky to engage fully in each one, but I mean to try.

Advent

Outside my office window the rain beads on the bare red branches of the stripped black walnut. I suppose this is how my soul should be, this time of advent--still, waiting. But it is not. My soul feels more like a decked-out tinsel tree, laden with blinking colored lights, at times giddy and at time irritated by the tickling of fake snowflakes.

It is December 11th. Just around the corner are the girls' birthdays, our anniversary, Christmas, and a house full of family. There is so much to look forward to, and my mind feels fragmented and busy.

Advent is all about waiting, for preparing ourselves for the baby who changed the world and who changes us daily. Waiting for babies at advent is my specialty, and an experience that brings me closer to understanding Mary's waiting. As our pregnant pastor reflected last Sunday, and as I have often thought, being pregnant is a perfect metaphor for the advent season. At those times of waiting for Merry and Elspeth, I felt filled with life, life that spoke to me in secret ways as I went about daily tasks. I sat quietly as others talked, and the baby would rise to meet my hands. But that life was cloaked in secrets. I could not rush the opening of my gift; I had to wait, sometimes in great discomfort, sometimes overwhelmed by the enchantment of my baby's dancing. This baby, separate from me but inside of me, this new gift for the world and for myself, would be born through the paradox of pain and hope. All I had to do was wait.

But waiting is not very easy. For me, waiting makes me want to fill my life with busyness before an event arrives. I want to be so busy that I do not have time to be impatient. I want to occupy myself with lesser joys so that I do not have a moment to feel sorry that the greater joy is not yet upon me. But that destroys the magic of waiting, the silence that should enfold us, the solitude where we prepare ourselves for Coming.

This solitude is hard to find these days. As I write, Elspeth is up AGAIN from her nap and she scoots around the floor with the baby. I am just waiting for Merry's wail, where she informs me that Elspeth is UP and she is IN BED. I envy the tree outside my window. There are no squirrels or birds or two-year olds hanging on its branches.

But advent is also about seasons, and about accepting, with joy, the season that you and I have been given. Is my life crazzzzzzzy? Then I accept it with joy (this said sometimes through clenched teeth). Some day my life will be different, and I will struggle to accept that change with joy as well. I know myself all too well--always jumping to the next stage in my mind, assuring myself that tomorrow will be more exciting, more peaceful, more something or other.

Little baby, little child, I wait for you. Help me to wait well.

Solitude and Crazy Life

So I'm reading an entry on this great blog, Kicking the Gourd, and suddenly I find myself writing a paragraph or two on the comments. And suddenly I realized I haven't really written in a long time. Also, this comment turned into one directed back at me, with big letters: GO AND WRITE. Seriously, I lose so much time just messing around. By the time the girls are fed and in bed and the house has been saved once again from falling to the ground in a heap of cobwebs and dust, I just can't summon the energy to do anything but peruse some magazine or stare open-mouthed into the TV screen. So R.P., I would add that my life is imbalanced, too. Do I lack the commitment, the sisu, the devotion? Is it enough some days to survive, engaging all day with three sweet faces and congratulating myself that all five of us are still alive at the end of the day?

So with apologies to R.P. from K the Gourd, and with assurances that this comment was really for you, well, here it is:

i have a slightly different perspective on the "giving to people" thing than you. that is because i am in the midst of a crazy parenting phase in my life--three girls, one who just learned how to crawl--and I have to tell myself that it is okay to stop and do something else once and a while besides giving to other human beings. nobody gives perfectly, that's inarguable, and giving to another is a choice whether the motivations begin or follow the act. so i'm thinking, reading your blog, that life is all about balance. a life lived entirely in art and not in true community with humans is empty, no doubt. however, a life lived in constant, active giving to others can also be one of selfishness (to every sacrificial act, an ugly, self-congratulatory underbelly can be present).

i guess i'm thinking this way: i have to be fed by solitude, by communing with god through writing, silence, reading--i need to be filled if i am to be spilled out for someone else. on the other hand, being with people, actively serving and bungling through real life with my hands dirty makes me a much better, much more humble writer.

there is no dichotomy. the two work together, feed and eat one another. jesus' life shows us this. solitude, people. people, solitude. we desperately need both. take this perspective from someone on the "other end" of your spectrum: no time to write, exhausted by people. there are seasons to life, and each season demands that we back up, eye the scales, and balance again.