A Slower Advent

Happy Advent!

I usually only post during Lent and about my books, but I wanted to share a talk my daughter Jennifer Friend gave at a ladies’ luncheon at church:

Good morning, everyone,

We have all just heard a bunch of wonderful and beautiful ideas for how to celebrate Advent with your families, and I know I could call on just about anyone in the room to come up and tell us even more ideas we haven’t heard yet…

But this is a busy time of year for moms… in many families it is often the mom making the magic happen for her family in December. It is a joy and a privilege to do so, but it can also be exhausting!

I want to give you permission to do something quite radical this year…

I want to give you permission to do… less.

Jesus will still be born at Christmas if all you do this year is a really intentional Advent Wreath tradition.

Jesus will still be born at Christmas even if all you do this year is a faithful observance of the various saint feast days in December. Or if you just pull out a book to read each day instead of individually gift-wrapping 24 books to open and read throughout Advent!

Jesus will still be born at Christmas even if all you do is a really great Jesse tree. And really, Jesus will still be born at Christmas even if you can only manage a mediocre Jesse tree! If something is truly worth doing, it’s even worth doing badly!

Maybe you have a new baby! Or perhaps you lost a loved one this year! Or someone is searching for a job! Or you are a grandma for the first time this year!

Emmanuel…     God with us…   Emmanuel is not diminished by the season of life we are in!

A couple of years ago we pulled out our Advent tub and tried to do it all. Each kid chose a different Jesse tree, we had a new Advent Wreath program for readings, various grandmas sent us new Advent calendars, we had fancy paper ornaments for each saint feast day to print out and color and then cut out and assemble, not to mention more secular traditions for December! We would get up each Advent day and go through each Jesse tree, one kid putting up a sticker, another a magnet, another something on the fridge, another hanging up a tiny book, and none of the readings lined up with each other, then we had to update each Advent calendar, and we were too busy to enjoy the coloring of the saint ornaments, and too tired to assemble them, and then we had to get ready to head to the next December event for the day!

It was tiring, and I was probably not the most patient mother that year.

This year, dare to be different. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO IT ALL! If your little ones are still young, and you have ideas for 10 different traditions you have heard this morning, you DO NOT need to start every single new tradition this year! Try ONE! Write the rest of the ideas down on a piece of paper and tape it to your Christmas or Advent tub to look at next year!

If you are a grandma, you don’t have to think of every tradition you’d like your grandkids to grow up with. Don’t pressure your adult children to continue every tradition they grew up with. Let them try to do less this year, if they need to. Let them establish their own traditions. It doesn’t mean that they don’t treasure the childhood traditions you chose for them growing up!

If your kids are somewhere in between… not tiny, but not yet grown… get them involved! Ask them to help you choose which 1 or 2 Advent traditions they would like to try this year! What a healthy life skill to be instilling now!

Saying no to something good this year doesn’t mean you are saying no to it forever! You can take a break for a year and decide again what to try next year!

I am going to borrow some wisdom from Sarah Mackenzie and encourage you to keep in mind three beautiful missions this year. They are true for a healthy homeschool, and I think they apply beautifully to any family and any liturgical season…

1 – DO LESS,

2 – AS CONSISTENTLY AS YOU ARE ABLE, and

3 – PUT RELATIONSHIPS FIRST.

That’s all. Consider these three as you make decisions about how to celebrate Advent with your family this year. Do less, as consistently as you can manage in the season of life that you are in and be sure to keep relationships on the front burner, not the back burner. Relationships not only with your family and friends, but also with the God who so desperately desires you to slow down enough to see Him.

Give your family the gift of a Mama that isn’t staying up until midnight or beyond stressing over the next day. Give your family the gift of a more rested woman who chose to focus her energy on doing one or two things well, rather than trying to do it all and having no patience left for the people she loves. If you’re married, give your spouse the gift of a wife who isn’t 110% focused on the kids at this time of year. Find ways to make it a little easier on yourself, so that you too get to enjoy the ‘waiting in hope’. So that you get to enjoy the season as well, and that you will have room at the inn of your heart for Jesus to be born this Christmas.

The Advent that your family experiences this year will be greatly enriched if they get to see you slow down and cherish this beautiful season for yourself. Do less, as consistently as you are able, and put relationships first.

See Jesus through Suffering to Joy

Imagine yourself as Jesus, sitting side-by-side with your best friends on Holy Thursday. You’ve just instituted the Eucharist as a way to stay with your friends, knowing that you’ll be physically leaving them later tonight. You’ve taken them away to pray, and you plead for strength to get through what lies ahead. You pray for your followers, the men and women whom you’ve been preparing for three years. You pray, desperately wanting to find another way, any other way, but already it has begun, and you bow to your Father’s will. One of your chosen twelve has betrayed you and led the Romans to your arrest. The soldiers come to take you to your judgment and your death. Your followers have scattered, none remaining at your side. You are stripped, beaten, scourged, and perhaps even worse, you’ve heard your Peter, your rock, deny you.

Dragging a heavy, rough-hewn cross along your final sorrowful way, on a shoulder still raw from the whip, you see the pain in the eyes of the women. You see your mother and are pierced by the same grief that pierces her heart. You are nailed to the cross, your hands and feet bearing the weight of your body on the excruciating pain of the nails. You struggle to breathe, knowing you are counting your last gasps. But you summon breath to give your mother to John and by so doing, make her mother to the world. And then you forgive the people who’ve inflicted the pain that is unbearable, so unbearable that you die.

If imagining yourself as Jesus suffering has moved your emotions, you have just seen Jesus.

Now imagine yourself, one of His followers, at the foot of the cross. You look up at Him, the One you hoped would ease your pain. And instead, He has just exhaled His last breath. Are you next to die?

Fear. Doubt. Grief. If you have known any of those emotions, any of this pain in your life, you have been at the foot of the cross and you have seen Jesus through suffering. More importantly, He has seen you. He knew then, and He knows now the pain in your heart. Whether it is emotional pain from abuse, betrayal, abandonment, guilt, or the physical pain of a broken body as yet unhealed, He saw you from the cross. He sees you now. And He knows that in long nights of anguish, or brief glimpses of His nearness, you have reached out to Him. You have found Him through pain. Perhaps seeing you, as you looked with faith to Him, eased some of His pain.

We are truly blessed to live many years after that crucifixion night. We know the hope of the resurrection—both Jesus’ resurrection and our own still to come. In that hope, we see Jesus, and not only see Him, but we are invited to live beyond the pain, to live with Him forever. Through Easter, we will see Him in joy! He sends us experiences of Joy to keep us filled with hope.

Perhaps we experience His touch of joy in nature:

• Something about green trees, untamed animals, water on the move, snowy mountains, or a star-teemed sky can make our hearts surge with thanksgiving to the Creator.
• Leaving routine behind as we travel into the wilderness holds restoration for the weary. Jesus exemplified this by going away to pray. He calls us to retreat to the desert, as well as to mountaintop experiences.
• “Beside still waters he refreshes my soul.” Psalm 23

We might experience Jesus’ joy through children:

• Holding a tiny baby and seeing one of her first smiles delights us. The miracle that we behold, as we snuggle a newborn, is a taste of the miracle of taking Jesus into our arms and loving Him with awe and thanksgiving.
• Watching a child discover new experiences refreshes our own outlook.
• Having a little one come running for comfort and being calmed with a hug or soothed on our lap lifts our hearts.
• Rocking a child to sleep brings peace to our hearts.
• Seeing a teen discover pride in a job well done we share their joy.
• Giving a daughter away to a well-chosen groom gives us hope for the future.
• Holding a new grandchild, we remember holding the parent. Such happiness!

We can find Jesus’ joy through helping others.

• There’s an old Chinese proverb, “If you want happiness for an hour—take a nap. If you want happiness for a day—go fishing. If you want happiness for a year—inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime—help someone else.”
• “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Making the world a better place for others is one beautiful path to joy. Joy comes from using our gifts for others. — Frederick Buechner
• “Whoever is happy will make others happy.” ―Anne Frank
• “Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.” ―Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another route to joy is through gratitude. Appreciating what we have focuses us on how blessed we already are.

• “If you want to find happiness, find gratitude.” ―Steve Maraboli
• “It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” David Steindl-Rast

But perhaps the Easter message sums up all joy as the result of Love.

• “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” John 15

Thank you for reading these Lenten posts. I pray they have helped you. May your Easter bring you joy and help you to see Jesus!

See Jesus through Suffering

Our elderly Frank continues to tell his story:

Sometimes, pain forces our attention on God. Not that God gives us pain, but evil, poor choices, and our broken world do. Yet, God can take our suffering and turn it into good. He might utilize a trauma to help us realize how much we depend on God, and how little we can do without Him. That’s the way it was for my son.

Daniel and I were arguing in the middle of the street. Suddenly, a car careened around the corner and skidded toward us. Daniel had his back to it and, consumed by his own anger, wasn’t paying attention. I grabbed his jacket, pushing him as hard as I could out of the way, and shouted, “God, save my son!” He was bigger than me by that age, but I firmly believe God gave me extra strength. I had succeeded in getting him out of the path of the car, but it hit me and threw me into the air. I don’t remember anything after that, until a few days later when I woke in the hospital, so the rest of this story is what my son told me.

Daniel called 911, screaming for an ambulance, not only for me, but for several members of his football team in the car, which had hit a tree after hitting me. I’m told he stayed at my side at the hospital, terrified that I would die. And maybe it was touch and go for a while there. I had broken a hip and two ribs and lay in a concussion-induced coma.

According to my son, he railed against God, demanding to know why He’d let this happen. Wasn’t it enough that he didn’t have a mother? Would God take his father, too, a father who, in my son’s words, had served God so diligently? If so, Daniel reasoned, if I died, he didn’t want to have a God that was that mean. He’d never believe in God again. He was determined to renounce his faith.

By the third day, things weren’t looking good for my recovery. The doctors had started trying to prepare him for the worst. Terrified, he realized he needed a world where miracles were possible. He needed a God who could heal. Daniel, in desperation, made a pact with God to return to his faith and become a priest if God would spare my life. Soon after that, I awoke. That timing, that answer to prayer, was more than a miracle for me. It worked miraculously in Daniel’s heart and soul, too. Little did I know that when I begged, “God, save my son,” He would save him spiritually as well as physically.

Five key players of the football team were hurt badly enough to require weeks to recover. The coach decided to forfeit the season, partially as a lesson to the whole team about underage drinking and driving, and about making choices to promote one’s health. Daniel immersed himself in his faith with his newfound time. True to his word, he returned to our morning Masses. He studied the Bible. He joined the Youth Group and would tell his story to anyone who would listen. He began to research colleges with seminary programs. He’d found his own Savior, and more importantly, his Friend. He admitted to being pretty fond of me, too, and happy to have me safe.

Betty here:

Of course, we don’t often experience miraculous deliverance from our suffering, but when we reach out to God from our pain, He answers and fills us with His Grace. He comforts and accompanies us throughout our agony. The psalmist says, “Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for He is at my side.” (23:4)

Jesus knows suffering. He experienced torture and death, dying to prevent us from suffering in the next life. Whenever we look at a cross, we see Jesus and can remember what He went through, for us. As children, we might have been told to “offer it up.” By joining our suffering to Christ’s, it becomes an act of love.

Here are a few other thoughts on suffering from the New Testament:

• He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” (Revelation 21:4)
• And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:2-4)
• Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:17)
• To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. (1 Peter 2:21)
• And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:10)