a scribble of jo

I am full of an awareness for this year’s advent. The preparation for a promise’s fulfillment. The promise of something good still to come.

It feels like something important is happening here, but I can’t put my finger on it exactly. I see the moments as they unfold in front of me, and I know I will remember this season as “That was when.” In these minutes, though, I wonder, “What? That was when what?“

Let me explain.

One unusual and rare evening this week, I find myself still awake after the kids have fallen asleep. I go downstairs to take stock–what should I clean now? what can wait until morning?–but I end up on the couch, considering our Christmas tree.

This tree, sparse and slightly crooked but standing all the same, makes me sad. It reminds me of the home I had two years ago when Eric said, “We need a tree that will last us.” We were anticipating the birth of our third baby, and Eric was thinking ahead ten, twenty years. He was imagining the Christmas mornings we would spend watching the kids fumble over wrapping paper debris. He was imagining he would be here for those mornings.

It is hard for me to accept that this Christmas tree is here, but Eric is not. All these things here, but he is not. The Spider-Man ornament from when he was little. The clothespin Rudolph decoration he made in kindergarten. When I took out the stockings, I hesitated over Eric’s. What am I supposed to do with this? I hung it, but then a moment later took it down. Archie, jumping around the periphery, thrilled to see Christmas take life, came over to where I sat on the floor, red knitted stocking in hand. I wondered if he would recognize it. The little “oh” he let out told me he did.

I looked up at him and said, “I don’t know what to do with this.” Archie put his hand on the E, and then took the stocking from me. He said, “It’s okay, Mommy. We can still put it up. And if it makes us sad, that’s ok, because that means we still remember Daddy. And that’s good.”

Advent. The promise of something good still to come.

Mary must have known the birth of her Savior meant the death of her son. She must’ve known with the fulfillment of God’s promises came a heartache no mother could fathom. Did she remember, in her deepest aches, that there was still more to hope for? Did she recall what she’d been told, that her son’s death meant her Lord’s later resurrection? Was the promise of Christ’s resurrection enough, to see her through the pain of his dying?

I believe something important is happening here. I just can’t put my finger on what it is exactly.