Busy and Fresh

I feel it is written with the same surprise every year.  But December is so busy.  This season is once again upon us.  Every year I think about Christmas and the month of December and wonder about why it does so much to people in both good and bad ways.

  You see it everywhere in this chaotic wintery world.  People can get really stressed out.  Winter driving conditions can be a legitimate new pace to get used to.  But in Minnesota you just shore up and get used to it again and it seems normal until late March. 

I’m talking more about the inner hype.  The expectation which seems to have come out of left field, and quickly.   When this became really clear to me as an adult, I began to ask why.  Sometimes people have really direct answers, and other times, they stop and they say they can’t think of one thing at all.  I tend to think the question in the first place is the relief.  To stop and wonder about something like that takes you out of the bustlings. 

In December there is a lot of bustling around.

I don’t really buy into the word ‘busy’ at any time of the year.  It’s awkward.  So awkward, really.  When people use it in conversation, lots of times it’s because they want to omit themselves from some other commitment, right there in front of you. It’s vague instead, and it seems to say, ‘You’re not really worth  it’ OR ‘’I feel weird around you so I’m going to cop out, watch me, here and now’.  I don’t need a play by play of a person’s life, but everyone has the same amount of time in their day.  You do things or you don’t and busy is suddenly then just boring.  Even when life is full, let’s say ANYTHING else to each other besides ‘I’m so busy’. 

Right? 

I think that there is a lot of unnecessary expectation built up in the holidays.  Most would probably agree.  In addition to the daily work you’ve already got going, you’re seeing marketing and advertising coming at you from every store you’ve ever passed in your life.  And your family fills your heart and your mind in a way that you don’t feel in other seasons.  I also think that God asks you to grapple with the frailty of humanity in Advent, and what you’re waiting for anyway when it comes to Christmas and the birth of Jesus. 

Two seconds into the story of Jesus, and I’m grateful.  So grateful and astonished really, that God tipped the world over on its side and brought us the thing we’ve always longed for.  That He showed us home before we ever knew we wanted it.  That it doesn’t look like the thing we want it to look like.  That you go through your own frailty before you see it for what it is.  Grace.  Emmanuel.  God with us.  The quietness of Advent does and does not all at once match the chaotic pace of our world.  These are the kinds of things I see when it’s December and I feel ‘so busy’.

This week, the song ‘Fall Afresh’ has hit me in a new way.  I’d heard it before, but this week I soaked it in.  And for the last two days, in whatever I’m doing, I’m also hearing this song.  It is the feeling of good things hovering over me, in peace and desperation, and it has been the best song for perspective that I could have imagined in this fairly chaotic week.  God continues to show up.  In music, in beautiful snow, in people who help me when I need help, in silence, in the best conversations, in the hopefulness of Advent.  Of course it is like this.  Every year, every time.  I am always surprised, frail, and grateful.

 

Every year, right about now, I add some things to daily life, and take others away.  I only buy presents I really want to buy.  I wake up early early and spend lots of time in quiet.  I don’t go to stores.  I don’t look at ads.  I do write more, and differently, in set apart places.  I try to be quiet, and not say things unless they improve the silence.  I work really really hard and then spend time really really still looking around at how beautiful the world is.  I feel the contrast of being human.  Big time.  Of being frail and small and of feeling the greatness of God’s Spirit in me.  I see that the world is complex and simple all at once.  I sag with relief at the thought that Jesus came to be with me in these places. 

I think you have to be really careful with yourself, and thoughtful about your life, in December.   

I think about being salty.  Because it’s on my boots when I walk into school, and because I love salt a lot in general, and because lately in teaching I’m telling kids about salt mines in Africa.  It’s what I’ve done every December for six years.  I listen to Ingrid Michaelson and Sarah Bareilles sing ‘Winter Song’ because it makes me deep down happy.  I make snowflakes with my students, and forget the lesson plans for a day.  I think about Linus and the story of Jesus in Luke, and how every year at home my dad is the one to bring it up like this, and make it just that simple.  I try to find good snow and good time for snowshoeing.  Sometimes I just say, ‘Thanks, but no.’ 

And my world breathes.