Healing Our Decembers

Tears flowed freely during the meeting with my spiritual director, Sandy, as I shared with her the pain I was feeling. “December is here,” I said. “I get such a wave of anxiety and grief at this time of year.”

Somehow, I have a hunch I’m not alone in experiencing December this way.

December is the month that “our lives blew apart with more violence than we ever dreamed possible,” I wrote in my book Miracle Man. The month that my late husband, Bernie, suffered a massive heart attack—leaving my children fatherless and me a widow after 87 excruciating days in the ICU. Eight years and a wonderful new marriage later, December still brings it all screeching back.

“Beg the Lord to heal the trauma of all your past Decembers,” Sandy wisely advised. “And ask him to fill you with the joy of his birth.”

For December is also the month when we celebrate our Savior’s presence penetrating Earth’s agonies, defying what human eyes behold as mere babe-flesh, disguising the God-man. This is the month that Hope is born, ushering in the time of fulfillment for the long-awaited healing of our crippled souls and lame lives. December is, indeed, the month of Advent hope.

The hope of Advent lies in experiencing the reality of human frailty—and in believing that Someone, though fragile in appearance, is coming to heal us soon. The hope of Advent consists in a hearty cry for deliverance from the weight of sin and death—and in trusting that God’s glory-weight will pierce right through all of this world’s darkness. For we have all known the sorrow of “Decembers” during life’s winter months, times of shadows and suffering where we cry out for the Light to come.

Every year I’m reminded that December is a fitting backdrop for Advent, as it is the month that throws off the least amount of light in the calendar year. The days grow short and winter begins. The darkness brings with it a certain sense of vulnerability and disorientation, along with the knowledge that we need more Light, so we can see.

Advent hope has everything to do with vision. Advent hope is inexorably connected with eternal perspective. That’s because hope—Christian hope—is so much more than plain old wishful thinking. It is the theological virtue by which we order our lives toward heaven; the virtue that establishes trust in us that there is a heaven, and gives us the conviction that we’ll live there with God some day. Hope reminds us that this earth is not paradise, strengthening and sustaining us as we travel toward the longed-for Promised Land. Hope gives us a new vision for our lives, enabling us to see that what may look like “disaster” to human senses is but a moment of time that God holds in his hands, shaping it for our good, while simultaneously, mysteriously, molding us into good.

“Can you see your Decembers as a time when God reaches into your life to work miracles, instead of as a time of sorrow?” Sandy gently asked. “You saw that once,” she continued. “You wrote a book about it.”

Yes, I saw it clearly then. But somehow I go blind every December.

And maybe that’s as it should be. Since it is December’s darkness that beckons me to encounter my desperate need for a Savior. Along with my need for a divine infusion of hope.

Thankfully, it is Advent. The season of so much blindness healed. The Church’s daily readings ring out promises of what the Messiah will bring, along with rich Gospel accounts of those promises being fulfilled:

On that day the deaf shall hear…and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see. The lowly will ever find joy in the Lord, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.       Isaiah 29:18-19

And then we hear:

Two blind men followed him crying, “Son of David, have pity on us!” …Then he touched their eyes...And their eyes were opened.   Matthew 9:29-31

 Touch our eyes, Lord, and enable us to glimpse reality from heaven’s angle, through the lens of Advent hope. Heal all of our Decembers, and fill us anew with the joy of your birth.

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How Advent Helps US: Seeing Our Limitations as an Opening for God’s Greatness

Those who see only limits feel lost in a senseless universe. They live a despondent life-style. Those who see limits as possibilities to go beyond live a hopeful life-style…True freedom is found in people who maintain what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls ‘the passion for the possible.’   Susan Muto, Blessings That Make Us Be, 4-5

As December dawns and propels us toward the celebration of Christ’s birth, we are bidden to be an Advent people, to experience this sacred time with a “passion for the possible.” In short, we are reminded to live in hope.

In the darkest time of year, we light candles to remember the Light who has come into the world. On the shortest of days, we stretch forward in both anticipation and acknowledgement of God with us. As winter begins to dawn and flowers wither and die, we carry fresh, live trees into our homes to be lighted and ornamented with dazzling color, reminding us that we carry hope precisely by affirming what is alive and beautiful in our midst.

To be an Advent people is to make Christ’s coming truly present among us, not as some far-off distant memory, but as a calling forth into the present moment the presence of the One who is real.  To be an Advent people is to choose not to ignore the pain and darkness in this world, but instead to embrace those realities with confidence and trust that Someone has come, is coming, and will come again to liberate us from the long night of sin.

Advent hope breaks right through the misery of sin to remind us of the mercy of God. It clears our vision of earthly concerns by inviting us to see light in the darkness. It blesses the human condition by remembering that a fully human God has redeemed our frail humanity. Advent is the hallowed time during which we gratefully acknowledge that our finite limits have already been met by eternal limitlessness.

Each and every day that we awaken, we are confronted anew with our limitations, be they tiredness from a sleepless night, fresh angst over troubled relationships, or the remembrance of failures and tribulations we must face again that day. But to arise resting assured that we are the fragile, fallible children of an all-powerful, infallible God makes us an Advent people: a people who see “limits as possibilities to go beyond,” who believe that the God-man has already gone beyond every human finitude.

For Bethlehem was indeed a place of finitude. Poverty, deprivation, cold and dark provided the “nursery” for the birth of the Savior—the hallowed space where the Transcendent One broke into, and through, those stark actualities with divine presence. There, in abject humility, God offered starlight to open blinded eyes, babe-flesh to woo hardened hearts, and the silence and solitude of the night to quiet the whole human race unto awakening. There, the waters of a virgin womb ushered in a new creation—bringing not just life, light, and hope, but the remedy for every human constraint, conquerable only through infinite power.

Advent “enables us to hope in (God’s) unpredictable generosity toward humanity,” (Muto, 5). Not just two thousand years ago, but today and every day.

Will we let Advent draw us in? Will we touch and feed upon the divinity that begs our remembrance of God’s unbounded potential to heal our human impotence? Will we awaken afresh to God’s presence, to light breaking through our darkness, and to the reality that every human weakness is an opening for a manifestation of God’s greatness?

Advent is meant to inspire in us a “passion for the possible,” which sees instead of “the darkness of sin, despair, inhumanity and persecution” the “how much more of God’s promise of redemption” (Muto, 5).

It is Advent. Anything is possible.

Author’s note: Thank you to Susan Muto, PhD, for her beautiful insights on the Beatitudes, which I have applied liberally to the theme of Advent.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

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The Mercy Journal: Mercy Has A Name

We need constantly to contemplate the face of mercy.  

Pope Francis, Miseracordiae Vultus

In the searing opening scene of the musical drama, Les Miserables, there is an unforgettable dialogue between the law-obsessed police inspector, Javert, and the soon-to-be-freed convict, Jean Valjean. Watching the film over the weekend in an intentional effort to “contemplate the mystery of mercy,” I was struck by Javert’s insistence, which continues throughout the film, in calling Valjean by his prison number: 24601. Even in the face of the paroled prisoner’s passionate response, “My name is Jean Valjean!,” Javert persists in identifying him only as “24601.”

Having just read a reflection by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) on God’s name, a profound insight of Ratzinger echoed in my mind:

The adversary of God, the “beast”…has no name, but a number…six hundred and sixty six. It is a number, and it makes men numbers. We who lived through the world of concentration camps know what that means. The terror of that world is rooted in the fact that it obliterates men’s faces. It obliterates their history. It makes man a number…But God has a name, and God calls us by our name.” (Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God, 23-24.)

We hear much quantifiable data expressing the reality of suffering souls around the world: eleven million people displaced in the Middle East, four million Syrian refugees on the run, 300,000 exiles attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year. But it was not until we saw a little Syrian child’s face half-buried in the sand and heard his name—Aylan—that the human story of so many millions of desperate people became real.

The year 2015 will be remembered as the year that the “worst refugee crisis since World War II” became headline news. It will also be remembered as the year the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy was inaugurated, the year when our Holy Father challenged us to delve deeply into the mystery of mercy, to receive mercy, to become mercy. Mercy, says Pope Francis, is “the fundamental law that dwells in the heart of every person who looks sincerely into the eyes of his brothers and sisters on the path of life.” (Misericordiae Vultus, par. 2.)

Why? Because when we look into the eyes of another human being, when we see their face, when we learn their name, their personal story begins; a story that invites us to relationship, to empathy, to compassion. When we look into the eyes of those who are gravely suffering, we are called to go out of ourselves to meet them in their need, and to do what we can to aid them. This, in fact, sums up the definition that St. Thomas Aquinas gives the virtue of mercy, which he defines as "the compassion in our hearts for another person's misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him." (Summa Theologiae (ST II-II.30.1))

While the debate rages on about whether or not to let Middle Eastern refugees into America, this much we can be sure of as followers of Christ: we are called to pray for the displaced, to help them, to offer aide, to act. When we do, we become the nickname of Mercy himself, "Jesus," whose name means, “I am the one who saves you.”

*There are many organizations through which we can offer assistance to those in need, including  Catholic Relief Services.

This piece appeared first at Aleteia as "The Mercy Journal."

The Mercy Journal: The Face of Mercy

Dear Friends, Happy Advent and Jubilee Year of Mercy! This is the first in a series of reflections I'll be writing for Aleteia to commemorate the Year of Mercy. Enjoy!  Also, "Miracle Man" is ON SALE!  Please order a copy today at the link to the right!  It, too, is a wonderful story about the power of God's incredible, redeeming mercy.  

Blessings, grace and mercy to you and yours,

Judy 

And so it begins. The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy—where the Church and the world will collectively ponder the face of God’s mercy, launching what Pope Francis has called “a tenderness revolution.” The year will culminate on November 20, 2016, the Solemnity of Christ the King, when “we will entrust the life of the Church, all humanity, and the entire cosmos to the Lordship of Christ.”* Wow.

While many of us wring our hands about a world gone mad with hatred and violence, the Vicar of Christ on earth challenges us to contemplate “The Face of Mercy” that we may reclaim God’s mercy for ourselves and for the whole world. As pundits alarmingly warn us to arm ourselves, close our borders, and close ranks so we won’t be caught off guard by those who threaten us, Christ’s visible spokesman dares us to disarm ourselves with love, to open our hearts to compassion and forgiveness, and to “allow God to surprise us”* during what he insists is an extraordinary time of grace.

In a world inundated with news of violence and escalating global conflict, many of us have come to dread surprises. Are we afraid to let God surprise us, too? And if we honestly reflect, what do we see when we contemplate the face of God? Do we see a Father who loves us relentlessly and passionately, who gazes at us with tender pity and reveals himself as “Abba,” “Papa,” “Daddy”? Or as Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) so pointedly posed the human dilemma, does God appear “as a menace...as the terrifying police guard who is inexorably bent on punishing us?”** For as Ratzinger insightfully concluded, how we view God has everything to do with how we respond to God.

As I recently reflected in prayer on how I perceive God’s face, my memory was jarred by an experience I had in the confessional many years ago. Weeping profusely as I lamented my own wretchedness and the hot mess of my life, Fr. John—an elderly priest known for his immense holiness—cupped my face in his hands and gently kissed me multiple times on the face and forehead without saying a word, meeting my sorrow with the soft brush of his compassion. His fatherly pity pierced me to the core, and twenty years later, I still remember that encounter as one of the most profound I’ve ever had with the tender mercy of the living God. Outrageous, surprising mercy met my utter brokenness that day, revealing the face of God through the heart of a holy priest.

In an incredibly beautiful description of God, Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

“God has a name, and God calls us by our name. He is a Person, and he seeks the person. He has a face, and he seeks our face. He has a heart, and he seeks our heart.”**

 Is this how we see God?

As we begin the Jubilee Year of Mercy, it is fitting to ask ourselves: Will I let the heart of God penetrate my heart? Will I believe that God is mercy, not just theoretically, but for me? Do I trust that God’s love wants to meet me in my sin and brokenness to heal and transform me, and give me rest?

May we cry with the blind men of Matthew’s Gospel: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on us!” And may our eyes be opened that we may behold the merciful face of God.

*Misericordiae Vultus, par. 5.

*Ibid. par. 25.

**Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God, page 19.

**Ibid., page 24.

Hope Answered: The Way of the Child

Unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.                                  Matthew 18:3 

“God the Father is so pleased with you,” the old priest said with a broad smile on his face after praying over my husband, Bernie, just hours before his death. “Well done, Bernie. Well done!”

“It’s hard to miss the echo of God the Father’s thundering voice at Jesus’ Transfiguration saying: ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,’” I wrote about the experience in my book, Miracle Man. “It suddenly dawns on me that this is what Bernie Klein has been waiting for to die, and that this is precisely the gift that Our Heavenly Father wanted to give him so he can finally rest in peace,” I concluded.

The assurance of being God’s beloved son. A child of the Father. Isn’t that the identity that all human beings are called to discover?

Jesus enters this world as a little child precisely to teach us to say “Father,” says Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his book of collected sermons entitled The God of Jesus Christ. His vulnerability as an infant and a child make it clear that humans are not meant to be self-sufficient, but that we are by our very nature relational, in need of others and in need of God.

He became a child. What does it mean to be a child? To begin with it means dependence, needing support and help from others...Being a child…means learning to say “Father.”*

Sounds simple enough. But human experience tells us that it is often very difficult to say “Father” from our hearts. It can be painfully hard to perceive God as a loving, merciful Father, as Abba, Papa, Daddy. We suffer from what could be called a collective father-wound in our culture, and the wound bleeds openly, even in the Church. We are facing a crisis in fatherhood itself, where the meaning and importance of fatherhood are called into question, and where more than half of the children in our country are growing up in homes that are absent a father’s presence.

Each Advent, we are invited to reconsider the infancy of Jesus, which points us to the truth that we, like Jesus, are God’s little children. And like Jesus, we are called to address God personally, intimately, familiarly—as our Father. The profundity of creatures assuming such a stance before Almighty God can hardly be overstated.

I recently noted with interest that the Church’s Advent readings contain a recurring theme. The Old Testament ends with a prophecy of the Messiah’s forerunner, John the Baptist, who will “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” (Malachi 3:24)

The Gospel of Luke begins Christ’s Infancy Narrative with a repetition of the same promise. There, the angel Gabriel declares to John the Baptist’s father that his son will go before the Savior to “turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children…to prepare a people fit for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17)

It seems that a major theme of Advent is the turning of heavenly and earthly hearts one to the other, anticipating the spiritual healing that God desires for each of us: becoming a child, becoming His child, becoming like the Christ-child. Healing of this sort makes us fit for a relationship with the Father, and retrofitted for membership in His family.

The babe in the manger is completely vulnerable and dependent, much the way the sick, the elderly and the dying are at the end of their lives. Just the way that my husband Bernie was when his earthly life came to a close. Such vulnerability is good and necessary if we are to shed our world-acquired illusions of autonomy and enter God’s kingdom—which admits of only one path—the way of the child.

*Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, The God of Jesus Christ, Meditations on the Triune God

Finding Advent Hope: The Pathway Through the Heart

God cut a highway right through Bernie Klein’s heart, an artery that could give him life. Not surprisingly, that’s where Love seeped in.

“I died and I clearly remember it,” Bernie told me after waking up from a six-week coma brought on by a massive heart attack and subsequent multiple organ failure. “I could see myself floating in the air, looking down at my body, and I could see my damaged heart.”

That vision was the start of a near-death experience six years ago that took my late husband Bernie to heaven and back, where he met God and encountered with great clarity both the profound love of God and the spiritual condition of his own heart. I share the entire true story in detail in my book, Miracle Man.

“It looked like my heart was torn in half, and half of my heart was a vivid color of blue that looked like ugly debris. I knew that represented all of things I had done in my life that were not pleasing to God,” Bernie shared soberly. “The other side was beautiful gold, and I knew it represented all of the things I’d done in my life that were pleasing to God.” Bernie was “sent back” by God to undergo what he called his “purification,” about which he emphatically stated: “And I NEED it.”

Bernie’s experience calls to mind a series of Advent sermons delivered by Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in 1964. Ratzinger called our lives “an enduring Advent” and said:

the borderline between "before Christ"and "after Christ"…runs through our own hearts.*

“Insofar as we are living on the basis of selfishness, of egoism, then even today we are ‘before Christ,’” said the man who would become Pope almost fifty years later. He explained that our vocation as Christians is “live with Christ and in Christ,” an ongoing event in our hearts that makes every day of every year Advent for us—for the rest of our lives.

To live with Christ and in Christ is the hope of Advent, and for Christ to live with us and in us is our hope for glory (Colossians 1:27). In Advent, we invite the God-man to be birthed anew in our hearts, asking Him to blur the dividing line in us of all that is “before Christ.” In Advent, we welcome the Lord and ask Him to occupy our hearts, much as He did the manger in Bethlehem. In doing so, all that is “before Christ” within us increasingly decreases.

“Judy, you have no idea how much God loves you,” Bernie said as he finished telling me his near-death account. “I will spend the rest of my life spreading the message of God’s love to others,” he concluded. “Nothing else matters.”

God’s incredible love. Nothing else matters. Bernie saw that clearly after meeting God.

Paralyzed from the neck down and completely dependent on life support, Bernie’s mantra for the last six weeks of his life became: “You have no idea how much God loves you.” He spent those last days enjoying what he called “fellowship with God,” allowing God to run a road from his once-divided heart straight to heaven, this time, to stay forever.

This Advent let us take the occasion to ask: Where is the line drawn in my own heart? How much of my heart does not yet belong to Christ? May His Divine Presence displace everything in us that is not of Him, and may His light dispel any darkness in our hearts.

*All quotes from Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, are from the book of Advent sermons entitled: What It Means To Be A Christian.

Cultivating Advent Hope: Healing Our Decembers

Tears flowed freely during the meeting with my spiritual director, Sandy, as I shared with her the pain I was feeling. “December is here,” I said. “I get such a wave of anxiety and grief at this time of year.” Somehow, I have a hunch I’m not alone in experiencing December this way.

December is the month that “our lives blew apart with more violence than we ever dreamed possible,” I wrote in my book Miracle Man. The month that my late husband, Bernie, suffered a massive heart attack—leaving my children fatherless and me a widow after 87 excruciating days in the ICU. Six years and a wonderful new marriage later, December still brings it all screeching back.

“Beg the Lord to heal the trauma of all your past Decembers,” Sandy wisely advised. “And ask him to fill you with the joy of his birth.”

For December is also the month when we celebrate our Savior’s presence penetrating Earth’s agonies, defying what human eyes behold as mere babe-flesh, disguising the God-man. This is the month that Hope is born, ushering in the time of fulfillment for the long-awaited healing of our crippled souls and lame lives. December is, indeed, the month of Advent hope.

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The hope of Advent lies in experiencing the reality of human frailty—and in believing that Someone, though fragile in appearance, is coming to heal us soon. The hope of Advent consists in a hearty cry for deliverance from the weight of sin and death—and in trusting that God’s glory-weight will pierce right through all of this world’s darkness. For we have all known the sorrow of “Decembers” during life’s winter months, times of shadows and suffering where we cry out for the Light to come.

Every year I’m reminded that December is a fitting backdrop for Advent, as it is the month that throws off the least amount of light in the calendar year. The days grow short and winter begins. The darkness brings with it a certain sense of vulnerability and disorientation, along with the knowledge that we need more Light, so we can see.

Advent hope has everything to do with vision. Advent hope is inexorably connected with eternal perspective. That’s because hope—Christian hope—is so much more than plain old wishful thinking. It is the theological virtue by which we order our lives toward heaven; the virtue that establishes trust in us that there is a heaven, and gives us the conviction that we’ll live there with God some day. Hope reminds us that this earth is not paradise, and it strengthens and sustains us as we travel toward the longed-for Promised Land. Hope gives us a new vision for our lives, enabling us to see that what may look like “disaster” to human senses is but a moment of time that God holds in his hands, shaping it for our good, while simultaneously, mysteriously molding us into good.

“Can you see your Decembers as a time when God reaches into your life to work miracles, instead of as a time of sorrow?” Sandy gently asked. “You saw that once,” she continued. “You wrote a book about it.”

Yes, I saw it clearly then. But somehow I go blind every December.

And maybe that’s as it should be. Since it is December’s darkness that beckons me to encounter my desperate need for a Savior. Along with my need for a divine infusion of Hope.

Thankfully, it is Advent. The season of so much blindness healed. The Church’s daily readings ring out promises of what the Messiah will bring, along with rich Gospel accounts of those promises being fulfilled:

On that day the deaf shall hear…and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see. The lowly will ever find joy in the Lord, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.               (Isaiah 29:18-19)

 And then we hear:

Two blind men followed him crying, “Son of David, have pity on us!” …Then he touched their eyes...And their eyes were opened. (Mt. 9:29-31)

Touch our eyes, Lord, and enable us to glimpse reality from heaven’s angle, through the lens of Advent hope. Heal all of our Decembers, and fill us anew with the joy of your birth.

Advent Hope: What Are We Longing For?

I was meditating on the theme of God surprising us, and I received the below reflection unexpectedly from my daughter Gabrielle Klein Hicks.  It was too beautiful not to share!  Gaby is a homeschooling mother of three young boys and she and her husband, Grayson, are expecting their first baby girl next April.  Enjoy!!!

Advent is my favorite season of the Liturgical year. The year begins anew as we quietly prepare for and anticipate the birth of a child. But not just any child… Emmanuel. God with us. In a total act of love and mercy (and with Mary’s “yes”), the Word is made flesh and dwells among us. God the Son is revealed so that He may ransom His people held captive by sin and darkness. The hope of salvation is born. The Light of the World has come. What a thing to rejoice!

I can remember as a child feeling a painful longing come over me in Mass during Advent, and then ecstatic hope during the Christmas celebration. I remember being moved to tears every year, not knowing quite why, since my relationship with God was immature and distant, at best. What was I longing for? Why was I so hopeful?

Now as a mother, I begin to understand Advent and Christmas in a new way each season. A priest said to me during my first pregnancy, “Well if you don’t get Advent now, you never will!” regarding the fact that my baby boy was born on Christmas Eve. But I didn’t get it then. These days, time and experience (and two more children with a fourth on the way!) have revealed to me what I felt then but did not yet understand. This year, as I reflect on the gift of a child and the hope of new life, I see how much God has taught me through my children.

Almost every day there is a moment where I gaze upon each child’s face. Whether I am putting them to sleep or checking on them in the back yard, I just watch them.  Their innocence and lack of self-consciousness never ceases to amaze me. Their hearts have faith in their own goodness as well as the goodness of others. They love so freely. This is particularly evident when they see themselves in the mirror. Every time they see their reflection, they greet themselves with the most genuine smile. They are pleased with what they see, because they see what God sees…A person beautifully and wonderfully made by their Creator. And His creation is good. They don’t see frizzy hair or an ugly nose.

And I often wonder, when does this joy and peace in the way God created us get lost? When do we become not only self-conscious, but honed in on every flaw?

Watching my children has taught me to rediscover the truth about myself. Something I lost during so many years of exile in sin and darkness. I have relearned what I once knew as a child, which is that God is good and God is love. God made me in His image and likeness, therefore I am good and made for love. God loves me. I am good.

I can see self-consciousness developing in my almost six year old. It hurts to watch. I want him to hold on to the truth about who he is in God forever. However, in my heart I know that all of my children will lose this truth to some degree as sin manifests itself in their lives. They will have their own story of how God reveals Himself to them and sets them free. I am sure it will be a beautiful thing for me to behold, but I wish I could spare them the pain of their sin. I know, of course, I can’t. Pain is so intimately intertwined with new life, evident in labor and birth. You can’t have one without the other. Plus, Christ came to save them just as He came to save me. I know I would not have learned these lessons without feeling the pain of my own sin and without the life experiences I’ve had so far. So I trust in God and in the stories He’s written for each of their lives.

As I realize all these things, I now understand what I was longing and hoping for in those days as a child. I longed to know God and to be in communion with Him. I longed for the Truth and to be saved from all the lies my sin led me to believe about myself. And the ecstatic hope? Well, that was the chance I saw to come alive again in Christ. A chance to be free like a child once more. An opportunity to see myself as good again and have peace with my flaws, just as my children do now.

Every Advent, we will continue to await this ecstatic hope. I will continue to tell my children that Jesus loves them so much that He came down to this earth to find them and eventually lead them home when It is finished. I will show them in my own clumsy way how to long for God, how to make room in our hearts to receive the King, and how to endure the pain until He reveals Himself. They will know that they have a chance for not only new life, but true life in Christ, and that alone is worth hoping for!

The story of the Incarnation is almost too much to behold. God becomes a man...We will finally be set free! But for now, we will be patient as we wait. We will dive deeper into the mystery of being brought from exile into new life. Hope for you and me and all mankind. Then we will rejoice alongside the heavens and earth when our Savior finally comes!