i'm starting this post christmas eve, as we prepare the big meal to be eaten before we hopefully saunter over to Meeting for the Christmas Eve Service... this year my parents aren't coming to Meeting, as they found themselves missing their own church too much last year... so we go it with the in-laws who have no church and we will be fine, though i will miss giggling with my sister and tearing up when we sing 'o come let us adore him'... which is adorable in its own way, as we are 38 and 41 and can't stop giggling in public, with each other, and its been that way forever and ever.
and i miss it too, the masses of people in darkness and candlelight singing out to the skies our adoration and wonder at the birth of a KING in a humble stable. ahg. beauty.
and our Meeting is so wonderful but so small, the congregation's tiny voices mass together, still managing to sound tiny, though they are a mass straining towards the skylight, for sure. the children will surge to the middle for their christmas story, their 'all things bright and beautiful'... and their families will look on ... we will look on.
there will be ancient lightbulbs on high, tall windows of wavy glass, whitewashed walls without adornment, and we will sit together in community on Christmas Eve, waiting, waiting.
what it looked like, two years ago. |
now it is the 26th...
and we are so lucky, who get to wait and wait and are given the Grace of time to figure it out, hard as it may seem, long as the hours of wrapping and recriminations may be. we are so lucky to have repreives from griefs, mistrusts and need. we get to watch our kids struggle against exhaustion and excitement, overstimulation and more overstimulation, diets based on sugars alone... we are so lucky.
we struggle all that ourselves, all our dreams and wishes for our kids being almost inextricable with our dreams and wishes for ourselves, our own struggles and weaknesses coming to the fore... if we are able to see them. these kids are separate and not separate, all at once. and we are so lucky in this struggle, in this god-given time that we have. we are so lucky.
i'm off in my luck, to read a gigantic stack of books while the kids roll in their toy-wrapper-refuse piles, to nurse, to occasionally flinch at the sounds from the 'play area', which used to be my house...
we are so lucky.
happy new year. bless us all...