Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am. - Rainer Maria Rilke
Hope has become a slippery thing in my life. I've wrestled with expectancy, with anticipating God's goodness in spite of circumstances. I've grown through this process. But even so, I continue to protect my fragile heart because I fear it can't handle being dropped once more.
I traveled home for Christmas unsure and uncertain. Things are not the same this year, what with missing family members, new additions, and changing traditions.
I had hoped that I would not be in the same place this year but I am.
Oh, much about my life has changed in 2011. I quit, I wrote, I nanny, I dream. But certain elements have stayed the same, no matter my prayers otherwise. I don't want to remain impervious to change but here it stands. Why do I insist on repeating these patterns?
I have seen my best and worst qualities come out this holiday trip.
While I know I'm a sinner, I am often shocked by the darkness in me. My mouth has been thick with words unsaid. Once unloosed, there would be no turning back. I choke down regrets, comparisons, frustrations but they hover somewhere in my throat.
I wonder why I continue to cling to this. Why can I not let this reckless anger and despondency go? I am helpless against it. Not this time, I think. It's got to go but not right now. I'm unable to wrap my mind around processing through the roots so that it can end.
And yet, there is light in me as well, thanks be to God. It's there in my laughter with family and friends. I've held laughing babies, sleeping babies, crying babies. I've hugged and danced and toasted. I've celebrated accomplishing a dream. I've marveled over my beautiful friends and family. As friends have disclosed heavy hearts, I have listened, advised, and prayed.
In my good moments, I am perfectly lovely, witty, wise.
Christmas afternoon, I felt fully loved and fully myself. Then I crashed. Perhaps overloaded by the merrymaking, finally confronting my grandmother's absence, being single for another round of holidays, or a result of too little sleep. Instead of celebrating in the morning as usual, my family held off until evening. I felt tears needling as I gathered around the table for our traditional coffee cake and prayer time, thrown off by the dark outside.
Dad prayed, then Mom, followed by my brother and his bride. Tears rolled down my face as the candle lit for Jesus burned. The silence crept as my turn came but I had no words. I croaked "amen" and retreated to the bathroom to compose myself.
Christ born to save us and how deeply I know it is I who needs a Savior. I found myself appreciating His birth anew through my tears.
I have no guarantees. That's the crux of the matter. If I have learned anything this past year, it's that life can change in an instant.
But no matter what 2011 threw at me, God proved He is faithful.
Mary didn't know how her life would play out when the angel appeared before her, nor did Joseph when confronted with a pregnant-not-by-him fiance. They chose to trust and obey. Would I trust that it would be as God said or would I respond as I do now, pleading for insight and something to hold on to?
God has told me to be patient and wait. Through all of this, He reminds me to hope.
I gripped my dark morning of my soul the other day and landed upon the above Rilke poem over at Messy Canvas. Friends, I cannot tell you how many times God has used Rilke to speak to me. His words pop up at the moment I need them most.
I read the poem and, just like that, God reminded me of this Advent season in my life. How the moving back and forth has changed and strengthened me. How He brings good forth from bad, how I have moved from saying "why me?" to "use even this." How waiting is a necessary part of the process but I choose how I will wait.
I remembered the very good things about my life and how I keep counting the gifts. He is doing a good work in me. I thought about how it's easy for me to focus on the negative. For so many years, it was more comfortable to expect the worst than to hope for the best. At times, it's still the easier, awful choice.
So this is my challenge: to hope. Not just for my dreams to be realized but in the person God is helping me become. Where my tendency is to shy away, I will conscientiously look forward. I will "say to the silent earth: I flow" and "to the rushing water, speak: I am."
Let me no longer remain the same. To 2012, I say welcome.
