...and I didn't light any Advent candles. To be honest, I didn't even pull them out of storage.
It's not because they are hard to find. Every year, when we pack away Christmas decorations, we put our Advent candles and family Advent calendar on the top of the first box on the shelf. Precisely so that they are easy to access.
But I didn't go fetch them yesterday.
I meant to, I really did. I thought about it when I went to bed Saturday night, and again when I was getting ready for church yesterday morning.
But then, I had to brush my teeth and dry my hair and make sure the kids found breakfast. We made our way to church, and staked a claim on a back-row pew so that we would have room for the extra siblings and cousins who were visiting for the holiday weekend. I served as reader, I navigated my younger child's mid-worship meltdown, we all ate meringues and Oreos together at coffee hour before taking a detour on our way home to pick up carry-out brunch.
We enjoyed our shared meal, and then bid farewell to our guests as the began their journey home. I curled up on the couch and snuggled with my older child, who was desperately sad that his cousins had to go home. We turned on some favorite Christmas stories and listened to them, the kids and me on various couches, variously awake and dozing, Matt in the recliner beside the fireplace, all of us finding a few moments of rest. We made popcorn and played a board game. I had an evening choir rehearsal, and dinner was a foraged feast of leftovers, eaten in shifts.
All of these things ended up being more important than finding the Advent candles.
I feel like I've written a post like this most Advents in recent years - something about Advent beginning before I'm ready, or about the weirdness of having to prepare for this season of preparation.
I think that, in this middle stage of my life, I am a little too tired to make Advent something other than what it is: a time of waiting and a time of getting ready. Candles, twinkle-lights, perfectly-curated playlists of holiday music, the discipline of reading (or writing!) daily advent-devotionals: these things make for a beautiful Advent. I'll get around to them soon, I'm sure.
But today, it is still November. And the world at large still seems gray and shadowed and fractured and chaotic and wild.
Next Sunday, our Advent scripture readings will talk about making a way in the wilderness. Making a way is hard work. You have to clear brush, chop away at the overgrowth, dig up roots, pull up rocks, turn over the soil and spread it and rake it - only then can you smooth and pack a pathway, and mark it for travelers to navigate.
You have to dig through the emails that languished over Thanksgiving weekend, and clean off your desk, do the dishes, finish the laundry, pay the bills, return the library books, proofread the documents, manage the spreadsheets, feed the cats, sign the permission slips, mulch the last of the autumn leaves, water the plants, do the workout, drink the water, get to bed early...
...and then, at some point, head to the closet, find the box, and unpack the Advent candles.
Because Advent really shouldn't be about having it all together yet. And it shouldn't be picture-perfect. Because Advent is precisely the time where we take a look at all the mess, all the rough edges, all the unfinished business, all the crises and chaos around us. We take a look at it--honestly--so that we can begin to imagine something better. So that we can give voice to our longing. So that we understand why we say, "Come, Lord Jesus, Come." So that we mean it.
Advent shouldn't be something that we ever feel ready for. Advent should always be both a surprise and an invitation, an interruption that digs a stick into the thicket of our everyday wilderness to start digging out a pathway forward.
This is a season of making a way, of finding a path, of naming the grief, of being led forward in hope and expectation.
Candles are bonus.
Tags:
keepingadvent