Advent: A Season of Waiting and Preparation

When you’re in the middle of Advent and you’re waiting; longing for Christs return. Longing for anything other than this path.
Sometimes the pain is so searing it leaves me dizzy. The magnitude of the loss overpowering. Gary plays a message on his phone and it rips my heart right open wide. His voice. Oh, how I miss it. I knew his voice. I recognized it. I knew his step on the stair. These things a mama knows. And when those things are taken away – ripped right away from this life, it leaves you reeling and teetering for something to grasp. Because the hurt and pain of this world cuts like a knife.

 

But there is a voice that I have come to know. It is the voice of the Master. The one who called me into being and it is His voice I need to decipher from all the rest. The shouts of despair and grief need to flee in the face of the Almighty. Because there is only room for the holy.

And I have this one life. And I want to make it count. Even when there is grief and cancer and all my world is turned around. The only turning I want to do is straight to Jesus; straight into the path that He has for my life; and nowhere else.

 

It is Advent; a time of waiting or preparation.
What does waiting look like? And how do we cultivate a life in practicing waiting?
Waiting on the LORD? Waiting for his guidance and direction?
Advent.
Waiting for answers that may never come this side of eternity. I want to focus on the waiting and preparations.

My dancer girl was born at this most holy time of year. Advent. I remember well the waiting; the wonder of it all. I want to lean into all that this season holds. All my emotions are raw and sensitive. We are wired to recoil from pain. But this pain needs to be pressed through; lived through, prayed through.
So we place our Christmas Tree. A symbol of life. I breathe deep the fragrance. I see with open eyes, all those that have gathered. I breathe through the pain of loss, through the missing and wanting things to be different. I close my eyes and listen for the voice of the One,
who will Carry us through.

Psalm 62:5-8

“For when I am weak, you will carry me. .  .”
“We were never meant to walk this road alone.”