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!

Living Joy in a Culture of Death

I am delighted to post my first guest blog by my daughter, singer-songwriter Kara Klein. Kara will be posting here occasionally, when she's not on the road singing and ministering to the youth.   Enjoy!

“Good morning Holy Spirit! Good morning my life!” In Communita Cenacolo, a lay Catholic community in which I spent a year of my life, over 2,000 members in 65 houses around the world wake up every morning to these words.

Mother Elvira Petrozzi, a fiery, fearless, faith-filled nun, started this community 30 years ago when she began taking in addicts off the streets and bringing them to a dilapidated house in northern Italy. There she taught them to pray, depend on God’s Providence, and rebuild their lives. But more than anything else, in these three decades, amidst a culture death, this courageous nun has spread like wildfire to thousands of young people the joy of living.

“Life is a gift from God, born from His heart, which is love. No one can enter into the heart of our life for us. It is a personal journey,” she says. In the last five years of my journey with this community I have watched many people—young and old, children and parents—walk from darkness into light and rediscover the joy of living. Not because life suddenly went the way they wanted it to go, or they discovered some magical secret, but because they encountered Someone: Jesus Christ, who wants to set our hearts free.

The culture of death in which we live goes far beyond abortion, murder and war: at its heart is a generation that does want to live their own lives. And if we do not believe that our lives are truly worth living, how can we fight for the lives of those around us?

As I recently led worship for Cenacolo’s annual Festival of Life in St. Augustine, FL, a priest from Italy spoke of Mother Elvira. Even now, in her 80s, unable to talk or do much of anything, she is still smiling, in love with Jesus and those around her, and in love with her life. Life, in her eyes, is worth living until the day God takes her home, even if it means suffering, for she knows that the cross is the way to the resurrection.

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but think of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman with terminal brain cancer, who recently took her own life so she could avoid suffering and “die with dignity.” When did suffering become undignified?

With the eyes of faith, suffering is so very precious, for it becomes the sacred space that God uses to work miracles in our lives, pour out His grace, and show us His goodness and mercy. As Mother Teresa says, “God cannot fill what is full.”

This community has changed my heart in so many ways, but perhaps more than anything, it has invited me to embrace the cross, as well as embrace the fullness of life, hand in hand. How do we do this? Through love. Love hurts, love sacrifices, but love fills our hearts with joy! May we become a generation unafraid to love, unafraid of the cross, unafraid of the beautiful resurrection to which it leads, and unafraid to live our own lives to the full.

Kara Klein is a six time award-winning Catholic recording artist, worship leader and inspirational speaker, who has released five original albums and appeared on four international television programs. For the past ten years Kara has traveled the globe, calling people of all ages to embrace, fall in love with and rediscover the joy of life in Christ, and to believe that life is a glorious gift from God that is truly worth living. For more information on her ministry, please visit her website, www.karaklein.com.

Drinking Mary's Cool Aid

Susan thought her Catholic friends had drunk the proverbial “Kool-Aid.” A staunch evangelical Christian, she was offended and angry after attending my sister-in-law Hedy’s Medjugorje Rosary group and witnessing what she considered to be “blasphemous” prayers being said to Mary. As Hedy continued to host Rosary groups, Susan felt obliged by conscience to end their friendship, convinced that Hedy was not only in idolatry, but was leading others astray through her devotion to Mary.

Susan and Hedy had become friends several years earlier through their children, as each had several kids attending the same school in the small coast town of Pass Christian, Mississippi. The two families had grown very close—even taking family vacations together. But their friendship hit a breaking point when Susan and Hedy both became more fervent in their respective faiths, causing Susan to take a stand against Hedy’s perceived “idolatry” that left the friends and their families estranged for five years.

Eventually, Susan hit a personal faith crisis wherein she recognized that she could “talk the talk” of Christianity, but was unable to “walk the walk” toward the personal holiness she desired. After seriously reflecting upon the people that she knew who truly “walked the walk” as Christians, Susan came to the humbling conclusion that it was the Catholic women she had encountered along the way who had unequivocally treated her with kindness, patience, love and mercy. Though she still questioned their theology, she simply could not deny the fruit their lives bore.

“How could their lives be so full of the fruits of the Holy Spirit,” she asked herself, “when their faith is so theologically compromised?”   That question led her to a massive interior dilemma about the authenticity of the Catholic faith, which she felt simultaneously drawn to and terrified by. After much prayer and wrestling with God, Susan made a decision not to be led by fear. She returned to the Catholic Church, which she had made a brief foray through a few years earlier when she was confirmed Catholic upon her marriage into a large, Catholic family. (Susan was baptized Episcopal and raised as “nothing,” and her husband had ultimately followed her into Protestantism.)

Susan began to attend Mass and pray the Rosary, while going to the people she had accused of “idolatry” to apologize to them. Surprising even herself, she developed a great love for the Catholic faith, spending the next few years making beautiful handmade Rosaries “in reparation for my blasphemies against the Blessed Mother,” as she tells it.

Fast forward to 2014, when Susan called to ask me where she could buy copies of my book, Miracle Man (which happens to be very Marian, by the way. I, too, had wrestled with Hedy about her devotion to Mary at the same time as Susan—a story I tell in detail in the book. Let’s just say Hedy and the Blessed Mother won.) After meeting me on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans to buy six copies of Miracle Man, Susan gave the book to her anti-Catholic sister Elizabeth. None of us could have guessed what would happen next.

Elizabeth’s first reaction was severe annoyance at the book’s Catholic overtones and references to Mary, which she found offensive and irritating. But she pressed on to the finish, wanting to know how the story ends. By the time she closed the book, Elizabeth was weeping profusely, and she couldn’t stop crying. She went to bed perplexed, wondering why she had been so profoundly affected by the story.

During the night, she dreamt about “the most beautiful Lady” she had ever seen, who was surrounded by light and filled with a depth of love that Elizabeth had never before encountered. Elizabeth began to follow her, recognizing the Lady as the Blessed Mother. When she awoke, it was clear to her for the first time in her life why Catholics love Our Lady so much, and why she is placed in such high esteem. That story to be continued.

I can happily say that I have indeed drunk deeply of Mary, and oh, how sweet it’s been. She has led me into the heart of the fruit of her womb, Jesus. And He has led me into the heart of the fruit of His sacrifice on the Cross, the Eucharist. Food and drink like I’ve never tasted; the Bread of Angels, the Cup of Eternal Life. I’ll drink that cool, sweet aid any day.

Dear Ann Voskamp: Why Women Need The Mother of Jesus For the Fluid Beauty of a One Piece Life

Author’s note: I have quoted and paraphrased liberally from Ann Voskamp’s blog at http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/10/dear-daughters-why-women-dont-need-to-freeze-their-faces-or-their-reproductivity-the-fluid-beauty-of-a-one-piece-life/. All quotes not from the Bible are from Ann Voskamp.

Dear Ann, I like your work. I really like your work. You have a way with words that boggles the mind and settles the soul. Your insights can be astounding, and it’s clear as day they’re the ripe fruit of prayer. Thank you for that offering.

That’s why I was thinking when I read your blog the other day: “there’s no way this blog could fail to mention the mother.” I’m referring to the blog of October 24 entitled “Dear Daughters: Why Women Don’t Need to Freeze Their Faces or Their Reproductivity: The Fluid Beauty of a One-Piece Life.”

I kept thinking as I read your words that you’re leaving something out. More accurately, I thought, you’re leaving someone out.

You wax eloquently about womanhood and silvery splashes and white light, but you fail to mention the woman. The one who’s noted from beginning to end, and in between the spaces:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.     Genesis 3:15

Dear Ann, you inspire high ideals, and I appreciate that. You tell us: “My life is going to be about being a bringer of water,” which I admire, too. But, there it is—the question. Which woman was the bearer of the water for which we thirst? Who brought forth the water that alone can satisfy? And how does she go unmentioned?

Dear sister in Christ, please let me say that when you write that our daughters “watch us wait and struggle and be broken and believe and not shirk back,” I want to tell you that you’re describing Mary, the mother of Jesus. And oh, how we need her now. More than ever, this world needs Mary’s example of womanhood. We crave the shining light of the most blessed woman ever (Luke 1:42).

She, too, walked up a hill in the sun, right before the world went dark at three, and she stood at the foot of the Cross. Yes, she stood—she did not abandon the Son of God—because He was her Son. She had grown the bones of His spine, and her blood ran like a river right through Him so she could live—so we can all live—“open, fluid and willing.” More open, fluid, willing than hers this world has never known. Just listen:

Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.   (Luke 1:38)

It was her willing that brought forth the universe’s greatest gift.

 And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

Ann, your words pierce our hearts, dear sister, because they nail the truth. You’re spot on when you say that “every daughter needs to know that when she speaks her Father’s mind, His heart—she makes even now and this place into her Father’s world.” May I beg mention of our mother, who bore in her flesh the incarnation of the Father’s mind? Who birthed the Word Made Flesh into this world and made this place, at last, into the Father’s world? And the last thing we hear her say?

Do whatever he tells you. (John 2:5)

Because she’s that woman, whose concern affects Him so much that it begins to reveal His glory (John 2:4,11).

Dear Ann, how right you are when you say that we women fret and freeze and fragment, and this world scatters us hard.  And that we need the example of a One-piece Life where all is holy and, may I add, where it all flows together into One Seamless Body—to the One who came from her body. Child, please behold your mother.

I must ask: What wounds have made our faith so profoundly disconnected from her? What “has left us with (such) painfully disjointed and fragmented and compartmentalized” faith that we can talk of Christian motherhood without a mention of the mother.

Surely, it was not God’s idea to throw the mother out. Because she’s the woman, who “gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations.” It was the serpent that “pursued the woman…and spewed a torrent of water out of his mouth…to sweep her away with the current (Revelation 12:5,13,15). Lean in close, as you say. Can you see it? He’s the clown that emitted the current that ushered out our mother.

Dear sister, you summarize it perfectly: “Let us not tear apart the daughters from their mothers.” After all, His last instruction, just before it was finished:

    Behold, your mother. (John 19:27)

For each disciple whom He loves, the words are still the same. Behold, your mother. Take her into your home.   Welcome her into your heart. She is “wrenchingly beautiful…like an ageless offering into the light.” And she is not to be missed. Especially, dear sister, when the wounds of this world have left us bereft of a mother.

Behold the woman, dear Ann. And watch the current change directions.