Advent

"Christians recognize the four weeks of Advent as a time to anticipate the birth of the Christ child and the second coming of Christ at final judgment. During Advent we repent of the habits and practices that turn us away from the loving God who is always reaching out to be reconciled to us. We want to become a people who seek after God and who cultivate patience as we wait for divine justice to bring peace and freedom to an aching world." Enumo Okoro, Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent

I have always loved Christmas, but I have also always found it lacking. Christmas day rarely lives up to the weeks of anticipation before it, and as much as I love opening presents, they have never satisfied the ache inside of me for more. It always come too soon and leaves too early. I feel sucked in to the whirlwind of Christmas joy and then flung out before I can really experience or appreciate it.

When we joined a church community and I began following Jesus as a teenager, I figured this was the reason Christmas had always felt lacking. It was missing Jesus, and now I had found him. And therefore, Christmas would now feel like the celebration it truly was. And in many ways, it has taken on all sorts of new and beautiful meanings. But in other ways, I have still felt as though weeks of anticipation end with an emptiness inside, unmet by the systems in place.

The Christmas season is great for those whose lives are good, but for those who are hurting, who are broken and dying inside, it can feel like salt on a wound. I would imagine that the majority of people are in the latter camp, whether they admit it or not. And so we decorate and we shop and we sing carols and tell Jesus Happy Birthday, but it doesn't do much for us inside. It doesn't feel like Christmas.

It feels a little foolish to admit that what I've been longing for in Christmas has been Advent, because it has been there all along. But I don't feel like I was taught enough about Advent in my protestant, evangelical churches. We lit the candle on Sunday, but that was it. I didn't really get it. The Advent season, in which we enter into the aching longing of those in the midst of injustice and oppression and fear and abandonment, was lost on me. And I still don't really understand it, but I'm trying to, because this feeling of being abandoned and oppressed and in exile, those feelings often seem more real to me than Merry Christmas feelings.

This will be our seventh Christmas dealing with infertility. I enter every season hoping for a Christmas miracle, and exit it broken and bruised and angry. I look at the nativity scenes, see a mother holding a child that was given to her with absolutely no trying at all, and I ache in the loneliness of having tried so hard and gotten nowhere. We have waited so long, and our prayers go seemingly unanswered, our hearts still broken and longing for a child.

It is striking to me that Luke's gospel begins with a couple who have spent their married years bearing the wounds and scars of infertility. A gift is given to a barren woman, taking away her reproach among people. But we also have a woman who gets pregnant without even having sex. Elizabeth has spent her married years cringing at the sight of pregnant wombs. But the gospel tells us of a barren woman, now pregnant in her advanced years, rejoicing with a young virgin pregnant before her time. The one who has been waiting, and the one who has not waited at all.

There is something beautiful in this for me, as I seek to love and appreciate those around me who got pregnant for free, while we dish out hundreds to our fertility clinic each month. The gospels refuse to allow me to disassociate from those whose lives seem cleaner or easier than mine. They also refuse to allow me to see those lives as clean and easy. Was it really easier for Mary? No, she did not spend years dealing with infertility, but she did give birth to a son who would die at the hands of his oppressors, a son who would never be fully hers. Advent reminds me that we are all in this together, all aching with the "now but not yet" of Christmas hope.

So this is why I am throwing myself head-first into Advent this year. I am reading an Advent devotional in the morning and another before bed. Tom and I are reading a third one out loud in the evenings. I am listening to The Brilliance, Advent Volume 1 and Volume 2 during my 45 minute commute to and from work. The intentionality of it is good for my heart. It is finding me in the midst of my brokenness and cynicism, and it is reminding me to wait in hope and lament with faith in a God who answers, even after years of silence.

Advent is also corresponding to our current fertility situation. Since last writing, one failed cycle followed by a cycle on birth control (due to a ovarian cysts) has led to this one, with more nightly injections and an IUI a week or two before Christmas. I don't know how much hope I have of it working, and I spend more time thinking about finding the money for IVF (in-vitro fertilization) than I do expecting our current treatment to work. But this Advent season is reminding me that God answers the prayers of those who have been waiting and aching and praying for years. Those who feel forgotten and lost find that they have been remembered in this new Kingdom of God, and I am resting in that this Christmas.