You gain alot of clarity about your family when you live across an ocean and continent from them. I try not to think about all that is going on with them too often because, to be completely honest, it makes me sad. I love being in Charlottesville. I love being a youth minister. Those things allow me to stay present HERE, but I also try to protect my heart by keeping my distance from THERE (Kailua, my home town) and from THAT (all that is going on there).
I am very good at it most of the time. I am very good at it 11 months out of the year. Then December rolls around. My family does not believe in Advent (okay we do, but we choose to ignore it) the same way my family does not believe in birthdays. We believe in birthWEEKS and often birthMONTHS.
I don't think I ever really thought about why we do things so BIG in our family. But latley as I try, and often fail to focus on Advent I find my mind wandering to my family. My family is a smorgasbord of who God has put together to hold my life in place. We basically have 5 families categories...
My family: Mom, Whitney (best friend), Aunty Kanani (mom's best friend/Whit's mom), Seth, & Kainoa
Jay's family: Mama and Papa Rutledge
The Fishers: My dad's side of the family and a large percentage of the population of Kailua
The boys: James, Zach, and Patrick. Jay's closest friends and their wives.
St. C's kids: the families that grew up together at my childhood church, our parents decided to just raise us as a bunch. It worked really well.
Those people hold the story of who I am. Who my family is. Who we will become. And each of those people as individuals hold a world of hurt.
And when one holds a world of hurt... we each hold a world of hurt.
Together we are
divorced
job-less
widowed
addicted
recovering
lonely
betrayed
frustrated
abandoned
confused
lost
dying
Yet when we are together at Christmas we are also complete. We are perfect. We are healed.
Maybe I am horribly bad at anticipating Christ's birth because I get to live the abundance of that birth everyday. I get to be complete, perfect, and healed. I have that reflected and reinforced to me through my family. It's hard to anticipate what is already so real in your life.
I believe in a LIVING GOD who daily carries a world of hurt. He also allows me to carry a little bit of it for my family. He allows his strength to heal us and he gives us an awesome day to celebrate that with his birthday. So I guess it's just my families fashion to not celebrate the day and lead up to it with anticipation but rather celebrate Christ's birthMONTH in a BIG way.
So yes, I am a horrible Advent-er.
