January 5: Looking Toward Epiphany
The holiday cookies are getting stale. The tree is sagging a bit, needles starting to gather around the tree stand. We lost the centerpiece of our outdoor decorations to the wind, though I insist on leaving all the decorations up until Epiphany and St. John's Day are behind us.
Yesterday was one of the more difficult days of my life. The details are not something I can share here, but suffice to say I am exhausted. I don't have time to fully recover, because I need to finish a project at work today.
Still, this morning between the first and second alarms I found myself breathing in each beautiful moment of the holiday season. My daughter and both her biological siblings together for the first time on Christmas, sitting around the table and making inappropriate jokes. Quality time with the adoptive father of one of her siblings--time at the coffee shop just catching up. The delight of our foster son opening his gifts on Christmas Eve, and his stocking Christmas morning. Lighting the Advent candles with him day after day.
It is easy to find the holiday season exhausting and difficult, highlighting all that is hardest and darkest in our lives--it often does. It would be just as easy to escape into the joys and traditions of Christmas and not also attend to all that is dark and difficult in the world, in our own lives.
It would be easy to attend to the beautiful parts of the story and not the horrific ones--like all the boys under two years of age who were killed. I am sure Mary and Joseph, and later, Jesus, mourned for those babies, felt some level of remorse even though they didn't knowingly set into motion what happened.
This year the practice of writing has helped me to make a conscious choice to experience the holidays differently. I have chosen to hold each moment like a small, delicate gift, something I will not keep forever. I have chosen to be present to both the tragic and the joyful in each day, but never to let the tragic overshadow the joyful.
The practice of writing these meditations has grounded me, helping me to greet each day with a sense of hope and wonder, a clarity and attention I might not otherwise have had. That may have been enough, but the fact that some folks have read these means the world to me, connecting me to others at a time when all of my energy is focused on those in our family.
As I look toward Epiphany, I imagine the Magi traveling these 12 days of Christmas, moving slowly toward the star. I imagine Mary and Joseph bonding with the baby, learning to hold him in just the right way, to calm him, feeling a sense of awe even in less-than-ideal conditions. I imagine them going out each night with baby in their arms to look up at the wondrous star. I imagine them making plans for how they'll get to Egypt as the news became clear that they were not going home--and grieving the home they'd lost.
I imagine both the Magi and the parents of Jesus turning to trust--trusting again in strange dreams, trusting again that they would have the strength to make a long journey, to leave the destination place using a different route than the one they'd taken at the start.
I am slowly learning that part of trust, my word for 2018, involves being willing to take a different road when it becomes clear that road is the only one available. I am slowly learning to be attentive to the beauty along the way, to hold onto awe even in the most difficult times.
Yesterday was one of the more difficult days of my life. The details are not something I can share here, but suffice to say I am exhausted. I don't have time to fully recover, because I need to finish a project at work today.
Still, this morning between the first and second alarms I found myself breathing in each beautiful moment of the holiday season. My daughter and both her biological siblings together for the first time on Christmas, sitting around the table and making inappropriate jokes. Quality time with the adoptive father of one of her siblings--time at the coffee shop just catching up. The delight of our foster son opening his gifts on Christmas Eve, and his stocking Christmas morning. Lighting the Advent candles with him day after day.
It is easy to find the holiday season exhausting and difficult, highlighting all that is hardest and darkest in our lives--it often does. It would be just as easy to escape into the joys and traditions of Christmas and not also attend to all that is dark and difficult in the world, in our own lives.
It would be easy to attend to the beautiful parts of the story and not the horrific ones--like all the boys under two years of age who were killed. I am sure Mary and Joseph, and later, Jesus, mourned for those babies, felt some level of remorse even though they didn't knowingly set into motion what happened.
This year the practice of writing has helped me to make a conscious choice to experience the holidays differently. I have chosen to hold each moment like a small, delicate gift, something I will not keep forever. I have chosen to be present to both the tragic and the joyful in each day, but never to let the tragic overshadow the joyful.
The practice of writing these meditations has grounded me, helping me to greet each day with a sense of hope and wonder, a clarity and attention I might not otherwise have had. That may have been enough, but the fact that some folks have read these means the world to me, connecting me to others at a time when all of my energy is focused on those in our family.
As I look toward Epiphany, I imagine the Magi traveling these 12 days of Christmas, moving slowly toward the star. I imagine Mary and Joseph bonding with the baby, learning to hold him in just the right way, to calm him, feeling a sense of awe even in less-than-ideal conditions. I imagine them going out each night with baby in their arms to look up at the wondrous star. I imagine them making plans for how they'll get to Egypt as the news became clear that they were not going home--and grieving the home they'd lost.
I imagine both the Magi and the parents of Jesus turning to trust--trusting again in strange dreams, trusting again that they would have the strength to make a long journey, to leave the destination place using a different route than the one they'd taken at the start.
I am slowly learning that part of trust, my word for 2018, involves being willing to take a different road when it becomes clear that road is the only one available. I am slowly learning to be attentive to the beauty along the way, to hold onto awe even in the most difficult times.
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