Muddling Through Advent

Advent has an uncanny ability to burst the surface tension of all that I am carrying. Whatever baggage, sadness, or grief I stuffed down or didn’t process all year will surely overflow once December hits. It’s like that science experiment you do in elementary school with the pennies and the cup of water. One by one you slip pennies down the side of the glass, pushing the molecular bonds to their breaking point until finally the bubble of water bursts and spills all over the table.

This week I found myself crying in the kid pool at the YMCA. Grief unexpectedly hit me so sharply that I couldn’t stop the tears as they flowed.

I say “unexpectedly” but I know what happened. The night before the pool, I had spoken with a friend who mentioned some news about an estranged relative that I won’t see this Christmas but still miss. I was reminded that there will be a gathering, but I won’t be invited. Earlier in the week, I had to set a mouse trap and carefully followed the advice of my Grandpa Charlie. Ten days ago, we hung my Grandma Annie’s handmade ornaments, and I remembered the milky blue of her eyes and how soft her hands were. Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Annie are in heaven this Advent.

Each one a penny, each one pushing the surface of what my heart can handle.

Christmas movies are a big part of our family traditions during Advent. We watch in a very specific order starting with Meet Me in St. Louis. Like any movie you have watched more than a dozen times, we spend most of our time pointing out funny hairdos or favorite lines. But every year, when Judy Garland tenderly sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in her sparkling head scarf with that far-off look only Judy can do, we stop talking. Truly, we barely breathe.

This year I found myself caught by one of Judy’s lines, “Someday soon we all will be together / if the saints allow / until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

Isn’t that just how grief at Christmastime feels?

The song was written in 1943 by Ralph Blane. The world was weary and wounded from years of war, and the Allied victory was still far off and unrealized. It’s a song about someone who finds themself inextricably middled in the pain of life. It is about someone who isn’t with the ones they love, someone who is lonely but hoping that next year life will be different. Next year, the troubles will be miles away. Next year, they won’t be crying in the YMCA pool because they set a mouse trap and hung some ornaments. It’s a song about someone muddling through Advent — confused, disoriented, waiting.

I wish I were resonating with a different song this year. “Joy to the World,” perhaps. Even Frank Sinatra changed Ralph Blane’s lyrics to “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” Sinatra said the song needed to be “jollied up.” Muddling is just too sad for many, and I agree. I find myself wishing things were different and surprised that they aren’t.

In her book Sold Into Egypt: Journeys into Human Being, Madeleine L’Engle writes that death and grief put you in a continuous state of disbelief. She writes, “I still want to turn to my mother, saying, ‘Mother, you’re the only one who knows about this…’ It is a reflex that will never completely vanish. The mortal fact that my husband Hugh’s death is still, sometimes, a matter of total disbelief.”

Grief is like constantly living in a state of shock. You go about life able to forget that the person isn’t ill, no longer alive, or no longer wants to be your friend. But then something happens, be it Christmas lights, the smell of pine, or the feeling of cold wind on your skin, and you are taken back. You find yourself horribly surprised at reality, and you experience losing that person all over again.

I grieve not just the loss of the people but also the future I planned with them. As a young child, I envisioned spending every Christmas with a certain group of people. And now, I find myself in a different future.

It isn’t that I’m ungrateful for the reality I am living. I have a husband that I adore, children that I love, and dear friends and family. But that reality, even in all its goodness, does not erase the lonely ache I feel for those who are no longer alive or close.

L’Engle goes on to say that the disbelief stems from the reality of the Resurrection in our mind, body, and soul. And, while that might be true, the grief of it can sure feel more like muddling than resurrected victory.

Advent pierces the surface without asking our permission. Grief is no friend of convenience. As much as I loathe wiping away tears at the YMCA pool, I know it is what I needed.

If I do not feel the grief, the pressure will only grow. I need God to break open the sadness so that I can allow him to fill those places. I spend too much energy trying not to open certain doors for fear that I might be reminded of how empty the rooms feel. But God invites me to open those doors to his gracious loving presence and walk into them together.

Grief and disbelief are the right response to loss or tragedy and pain. It IS sad that those proverbial rooms are empty. I muddle through December because something about death and suffering IS wrong.

This side of heaven, I wish I could tell you that Jesus’ comfort will mean that all sickness will disappear, all relationships will be repaired, or that there will be no more death. But I can’t.

What I can tell you, this Advent, is that Jesus promises to comfort those who mourn.

The past few years, I have taken up the spiritual discipline of being loved by God.

I say discipline because it is not as easy as it sounds. I sit or lie down with my hands open, and for 20 minutes I allow myself to rest in God’s love. I don’t ask, speak, work, or travail. I just breathe and allow the Holy Spirit to bring my whole person to an awareness of his loving presence in real time. A welcomed but unexpected fruit of the practice is that, slowly, it is soothing my grief.

When tears came at the YMCA, I slipped over to the vacant hot tub, opened my hands, let the tears flow and allowed myself to be loved. I did not make any excuses. I did not try and stop the pain or memories from rising up. Instead, I invited God into my grief. There are countless spaces that ache with emptiness, muddling, and disbelief. And there, in the hot tub, I experienced God draw near.

The way Advent pierces our lives might not be what we hoped for when we were young. So much of adult life feels like muddling, but God has promised us comfort. And if Christmas speaks to us of anything, it is that God is faithful to keep his promises. He bore our humanity and cried his own tears of grief. You and I are not alone, for the Great Comforter has come near, is here, and will come again.

And, thankfully, the YMCA pool is not too far off for him.