Pause

I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but lately Christmas hasn’t been doing it for me.

This is made even worse by the fact that the whole season used to make me positively giddy with peppermint-infused glee and jingle-bell laden joy. Seriously. I could milk a holiday spirit for weeks. I absolutely LOVE presents. Yes, gifts are my love language, and I love to both give and receive. In days gone by, nothing could make me happier than a nice, solid shopping spree that left my arms sore from all the bags I had to carry and marks in my wrists from where the plastic handles had started to cut off blood supply. Finding that perfect gift — the Lladro clown that my mother always pined for, the gourmet licorice for my dad — made me happy beyond measure.

I loved not just Christmas Eve and Christmas day, but the whole season leading up to the big shebang. I loved when stores started pumping Christmas music and blinking lights appeared on houses. I loved wrapping paper and TV specials and bows and the brain games that I would always get for my brother. Most of all, I loved that it was one time a year I could always count on my family being together, all under one roof, for at least one night, and mostly everyone would be in a good mood.

But something got lost along the way for me. Now, it’s all just a big black cauldron of pressure. Every year, something gets added to the list — now I have to remember to move those f’ing elves every night, and I have to hide the presents, and I have to manage the Christmas budget, which is absolutely no fun at all (I much prefer unlimited funding, lol). Now, I notice that so much of Christmas is just cheap plastic crap from China, and this depresses me no end.

My parents are older. Not just older. Elderly. I’m at that disturbing place where I wonder each Christmas if we’ll have another one together. In some ways, this makes the time that much more special, and for this, I am eternally grateful. But there are important family members who are missing, for various reasons, and this hurts my heart. Worse, it hurts my children’s hearts, and that is practically unbearable.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I know there is Jesus. I am trying to find him under the tinseled clutter and empty tape dispensers. I seek him in the branches of my fake-but-beautiful, made-in-China Christmas tree. I look for him in the wrapping paper and the stocking stuffers and the peppermint bark.

I think, perhaps, I am in a crisis of sorts. It’s not a major crisis — it’s not as though my life is falling apart and I’m going to go out and buy a sports car or a boob job. It’s more a crisis of identity, of re-discovering who I am in Jesus, and, once I do, what, exactly, that means. I have worked hard this past year and had some amazing things happen — but I’ve also only gotten so far. There is always this feeling of Not Good Enough that hovers over my head like a tarnished, crooked halo. There are so many voices speaking into my head that I have been unable to discern my own, and that of Jesus. It’s noisy in here, and crowded, and not always very nice.

And I think what’s happened is that Jesus has hit the pause button.

It’s taken me some time to figure that out — I’m kind of slow that way — that maybe it’s Jesus who’s saying, Hold up, there, Nelly. It’s time for you to take a break. It’s time to slow down. It’s time to pause.

I wonder if Jesus is here, even in what feels like his Great Absence, and is pregnant with hope in the waiting?

A long time ago, I had the strangest dream, even for me. And I have strange dreams. But this one was of an apocalyptic landscape, atop a mountain. And at some point in the dream, Jesus burst onto the scene, ascending up from the mountaintop to heaven. It was all very Bible-esque, and holy feeling, except for one thing: Jesus was pregnant. 

It was so bizarre, I never really told anyone about it. It felt almost shameful. But also prophetic. And I didn’t understand it at all. But now, maybe I’m starting to. Maybe I’m starting to understand the pregnant wait.

I remember being pregnant. I suck at it.

It’s uncomfortable and, in fact, painful. It feels like it will never end, and while there is this amazing, beautiful expectation, there is also the knowledge that great pain awaits you, not to mention the brutality of the unknown. It is this, I think, that is the worst — the not knowing what lies ahead. The thinking maybe you do know to find out you never had a clue. The comforting belief that everything’s in your control when in fact, nothing is. And this realization, it brings you to the very edge of your faith, where there is nothing left but a big abyss and Jesus.

And that’s actually the perfect place to be.

I don’t come from a Catholic tradition, and so have never really participated in an advent practice. But this year, I think I will. Because I realized that the pause — the wait — it’s beautiful. It’s a chance to refocus on God, to prepare our hearts for His. I wish I have been practicing this all my life, because it feels like exactly what my soul longs for, what my heart needs. To sweep the dust out of the corners of my heart, to fluff it’s pillows in expectation of the most very best guest ever.  It’s time to declutter the soul and get the good plates out, because you guys — Jesus is coming over.

When I was younger, I couldn’t wait for Christmas. The four or five weeks between Thanksgiving and the big day seemed eternal. These days, it rushes by so fast that I almost forget to wait, so busy is my brain with the mundane things of life: Facebook feeds and pre-cut cookies, CNN and the daily workout, all the fodder of a busy life that’s not really full at all. To pause, and to wait — to pay attention to the waiting is harder.  I realize now that the wait is not always meant to be easy. That’s the dance along that ledge, that edge of ourselves, that precipice where we get the clearest view of God, because it’s only our faith that lets us walk there along that dangerous cliff.

This year, I want to notice the wait. I want to pay attention. Instead of making a list of all the things I want, I want to be a blank screen onto which Jesus can project himself.

This year, I’ll wait. I’ll prepare. I’ll make straight a way for the Lord.

I love this applicable film by The Work of the People: