A Mary Moment Monday post

I can’t pretend that I’ve been really easy to be around lately. I’m pretty impressed that my husband still smiles at me, my mother-in-law will still speak with me, and that my children still seem okay with my presence. Then again, all of that assumes that they are as grinchy and selfish as I am, and they are not.

I’ve been whiny. I’ve been grumpy. I’ve been impossible.

Why has this Advent seemed so much harder than any other? Why has Christmas seemed like a looming impossibility to me? Why, why, WHY?

I have nothing to complain about: NOTHING. Not. A. Thing.

I have suspected, in fact, that the decrease in the twelve-month-old’s nursing and my past experience with depression might be kicking me into some weird thing.

As we dive into the last week of Advent–an Advent where I’ve been blessed by other people’s stories of how my work has blessed them, an Advent where I have found myself to be very blessed (though unable to feel so)–I find myself turning where I always turn when I don’t know where else to turn.

I’m struggling and teary and confused.

She knows.

And she points me, yet again, to the one place I can turn for comfort. She reminds me that the candles I’m lighting lead to the birth of her Son. She smiles gently at me and I feel like maybe peace is possible within my inner turmoil.

Those candles can burn within me, if I let them. They can burn away the doubts I have, the fears I harbor, the unexplained anxiety I hate. In those candles is the symbole of hope that awaits each of us on Christmas Day: God became man. It’s so unlikely, really. He didn’t just use words; he touched us and became one of us.

And maybe all I can hope for for Christmas is the continued pull of my heart closer to his through the guidance of his mother.

credit for grumpy old guy

credit for Advent wreath