Praise God from whom all shopping bags flow...?

I stood in line for an hour and a half without a cart carrying a basket full of stuff and two boxes full of more stuff for $160 worth of merchandise today. There was much sighing. I kept telling myself, this might be the only day you have free child care and can actually go to the store and pick stuff out, so buy the stuff and get out, get out, get out!

I love this season. I love the anticipation, the longing, the delight, the promise of hope and joy and peace, all of which I think are essential to practice and promote when the darkness seems to encroach from all corners.

Lydia's Christmas List

It's hard to practice peace and hope and joy in a line that wraps around the perimeter of a store with a hundred other Scrooges out to buy buy buy some joy joy joy joy down under the tree.

I am a planner; I set up certain expectations for myself and I expect myself to deliver or exceed those expectations. No one says, Sarah, you really should blog daily in the month of December like you have the last two years, but here I am wrestling anyway with whether to attempt to blog daily in December or whether I should give it up. It's a challenge, so part of me looks at the doubting part of me and says, "Oh yeah, you BET I can do it, just you watch, I'll prove it to you," while the doubting part says, "Yeah, you're crazy." But surely I could get up earlier, stay up later, sneak it in over lunch, rush home to rush off to make cookies to wrap cookies to deliver cookies to sing and pray and read and hurry UP sit DOWN buckle UP let's GO... Surely I could make it happen. I can make it happen.

Advent is the celebration of the coming of Jesus Christ; it is the period of time during which Christians sing, "O Come, o come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel..." the coming of Christ marks freedom from the slavery of sin, ransom paid, release from debt, burden lifted. We are supposed to hope for things yet unseen, and yet, instead, I yoke myself to obligation and ritual - I have to do this because this is what I do, this is what is expected, this is what will earn me love and appreciation. "Rejoice, rejoice, Immanuel shall come to thee O Israel..."

It is hard to lift your hands in praise when you're still carrying your Black Friday shopping bags.

"Advent" is a part of the word "adventure," a pursuit to explore spaces we haven't before. This is a new season, new territory, with new challenges and new opportunities. An adventure has plenty of elements we hope for that are yet unseen.

Advent also means "a coming into being," like the advent of computers, or the advent of cell phones. Once there was none and now there is. Once it was one way and now it is another way. I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see.

So, too, with this advent.

I do not think it is possible, or realistic, or healthy, to set for myself a quantifiable goal of blogging/crafting/reading/event-ing every single night of December leading up to Christmas. I think it might serve the opposite purpose of the season - where there could be hope and joy and peace, there would be despair and frustration and anxiety. I do not want this season to be despair and frustration and anxiety. I want to use whatever minutes of the day I have for sowing love into my kids, and this is surprisingly difficult when you begin to believe the best way to demonstrate love is by signing them up for lots of activities or planning lots of outings or buying all the things.

I think what I will do this year is string up "hope" and "joy" and "peace," and maybe we will weave these in with some unscheduled nights to play board games or in the early morning hours on the couch under a blanket. Maybe we will pray for ways to make hope and joy and peace real in our daily goings-about.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be a moment like tonight after the giggling ceases and only the tree is illuminated, when I will feel so moved I'll sing, "Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright..." and believe.

2013: I was saying the exact same thing to myself.
2012: This is when I got this stupid I mean awesome advent activities calendar idea.
2011: This was the half-marathon, parents-30th-anniversary, season-of-Beans-going-crazy year
2010: This is when I was trying to make more quality time for my kids. I've obviously solved this problem.
2009: I was super-duper excited about Christmas and poetry and life.
2008: I posted a poem about Snow in Auburn that I still like because it's really a poem about hope and God's presence although you might not know it because it isn't the best poem ever.