Advent I

I don't love Christmas, and I've struggled with this the past few years.  Today I think I'm beginning to understand why.

On the way to church this morning, I started thinking about how much I love Advent and how heartbroken I am to be celebrating another Christmas without a child.  I thought about the reasons why I love Advent, especially as I remember the Hebrew people who lived in a world without the Light of their Messiah.  They had hope, but often felt hopeless.  They trusted God, but often could not understand what He was doing.  They trusted that He had a plan, but it was very confusing.  I'm sure they even felt angry with God for not sending the Promised Messiah soon enough to save them from their suffering.

I realized that infertility often causes many of these same thoughts and feelings in me.  I feel hopeless, angry, confused, and disappointed.  At the same time, I feel hopeful, trusting, and expect to see God fulfill the desire that HE put in my heart.  

Maybe one of the reasons I love Advent is because I know about waiting for a child to be born.  I know what it feels like to think God is taking too long to fulfill His promise.  I know what it feels like to sit in the darkness of depression, despair, and hopelessness, and beg God to just fulfill the desire of my heart and fill it with His Light.

I hope that this Advent season, God will fill my heart with His Light, even if He does not fill my womb or my arms with a child.  And I will allow the dark, quiet, hope and expectation of Advent to be my comfort.  It is a time when it is okay to be sad.  It is okay to slow down and rest.  Our priest read from a devotional today that Advent is not a time of joy and happiness, but a time of wailing and sobbing.  That's where I am.  And that's okay.  

The time of joy and happiness will come as promises are fulfilled, and they will be.  Obviously, I don't expect our child to save us or to be a Messiah, but the emotions of my experience are ones that I believe were similar for the Hebrew people.  

And in a few short weeks, we will begin the Christmas season, and I hope that by then, God will have grown the joy and happiness of Christmas in my heart.  But right now, I guess I'm going to allow Him to do His Advent-work in me, and part of the process of getting to the joy and happiness includes the wailing and sobbing.