Advent Done Badly

I sat at home alone yesterday morning, while my husband bundled up our two sons and took them out to mass on his own.  For the third Sunday in a row.

I did try.  I got up, got dressed, had coffee and even got in the car but in the end, I came home.

I walked through the front door, threw my coat over the back of the nearest chair and fell gracelessly onto our red couch, where the day before we found the body of our beloved cat who had died peacefully in her sleep.  I looked around and saw the advent candles, all still the same size they were at the beginning of advent.  The Christmas tree that I have to say looks beautiful because William decorated it on his own, stimming with excitement after putting on each ornament, all the bottom branches boasting three or four glittery balls.

I put my head in my hands in exhaustion and thought of all the plans I'd had to make this advent THE advent.  The most peaceful, the most spiritual, the most beautiful one yet.  In my mind we would gather around the dark wooden dining room table in the evenings, light a candle, I'd read a Christmas story in my most gentle and motherly voice.  My sons would listen.  It would be magic.

And in regards to myself, I had decided confidently at the beginning of advent I would grow so much spiritually.  I would meditate on the first Christmas, I would journey with the Holy Family.  I would pray the rosary and be filled with unshakable peace and joy.  I would be generous and not yell or get angry or judge people or focus on myself.

As I read back what I have written, maybe therein lies the irony.  I would not focus on myself.  What were all my great plans and expectations, if not the ultimate focusing on myself?  How good I'd be and how I'd be that spiritual and good all on my own.  All because I decided to and I had the strength and discipline to carry it out.

How I would benefit from an advent full of quiet peace.  A cozy, candlelit, storybook preparation for the sacred birth of our Lord.

Then I could hand the Lord these things at the end of Advent and say "Look how perfectly I've preformed!  Look what I have done!"

However, the reality has been that I haven't made it to even one mass this advent.  I did maybe six reflections with the kids and then the books I laid out with such good intentions, sat unopened.  I have been so tired and worn down that I have complained every day.  This advent has passed in a flurry of changing sheets, illness, exhaustion, impatience, trying to calm meltdowns, trying to explain the death of a much loved animal to a little boy who thinks the cat died because we didn't pet her enough.
 
Yet nothing catastrophic has happened.  Only daily distractions, small daily failures and sorrows.  Somehow the spiritual got all lost in the mundane.

Some wise friends helped me to remember though, that the spiritual is also found in the mundane.  I tend to separate the two.  As in, if I am a success at spiritual living, all aspects of my life will fall into place and I will no doubt awe others with the transcendent glow that surrounds me.  If I am not successful, well then, it all falls apart.

Deep in my heart, I know it all falls apart anyway.  I can't make anything perfect.  Not myself, not my children, or my home, or my prayer life.  I don't have that sort of power or control.

Maybe I approach this Christmas with hands full of ugly, imperfect offerings.  Approach the stable tired and a little disillusioned. With only unsuccessful attempts as gifts.  Here's all my impatience Lord.  Here's my quick temper.  My sharp tongue.  Here's all the yelling and exasperation that my kids didn't deserve.  Here's my grief, yes, grief, over the loss of our cat.  Here are all the things I put before you.  Here are all my other gods.

Maybe I approach with these imperfect gifts but I don't leave empty handed.

I know the soft glow of joy that is found in uncomfortable circumstances.  The knowledge that failure isn't always as it appears.  The promise that we can be made new.  Again and again if need be.  And need be.  In this season of Advent, rather than give, I can ask for healing, for humility, for gentleness, for all the things I lack.

I can keep trying.

All That We Lack

                                                       

My mom told me once that each night as my four siblings and I were growing up she would pray at the end of the day that Mother Mary would make up for any lacking she may have experienced that day as a mother.  That if there were any failings in her mothering that Mary would make up for them with the perfection of her motherly love.

I find this concept so beautiful and reassuring.  Although I have always had a deep love for Mary, since becoming a mother myself, my devotion to her has grown in so many ways.

When we were in Canada this past summer, we met and spoke with a woman from Sri Lanka.  I thought nothing of it until later, when W and I were snuggling reading a story before bed that night.  I shut the book and he asked me in a quiet, tentative voice "Mommy?  Today I saw that other mommy didn't I?"  At first I was couldn't think what he meant.  "The mommy from Sri Lanka.  I saw her today.  She looks just like me."  I said "Oh sweetie, that woman was just a friend.  She does come from Sri Lanka but she isn't your Sri Lankan mommy."  He considered this for a moment and then asked "But where is she then?"  And then the words that you always know will come someday but not usually at 6 years old "Why didn't she want me?  Do you think she misses me?  Do you think she cries for me?  Does she love me?"

I was glad the room was dark because I could feel tears filling my own eyes.  I willed my voice to remain calm and steady and tried to answer as best I could "W, she did want you very much and I know that she loves you and misses you everyday.  She couldn't keep you there though so now you are here with us, in our family and we are so glad.  We love you so much."

"But why do you want me?"

Why do you want me?  How does anyone answer this question sufficiently?  If it were a teenager or an adult asking, there is so much more one can say, so many complex things that can be explained and spoken of and understood but answering a young child is different.      

I chose the simplest way and said "We want you because we love you and you are a part of our family.  We couldn't imagine life without you.  We will always want you.  Forever."

I wondered later, are these the questions that will follow him through his life as he grows?  My heart felt heavy and sad.  Not because he had asked about his biological mother but because my own explanations are so inadequate.  I've thought about these things for years but I have no perfect answers.  

After I had tucked him in and walked down the stairs, I sat out on the porch swing and remembered Mary.  This was something I could entrust to her.  She is my mother and the mother of us all so I asked her to especially be a mother to my little son whose heart is full of questions.  That she would make up for in him, everything that I can't provide, everything that this world can't provide.

We are so fallible.  The world so imperfect.  Love, so willing but also so complex, so fraught with pain at times.

When W asks these questions, I know I am not responsible for this lack in his life, I am not lacking, but something is.  A loss that is deep and primal is being mixed with something beautiful and spiritual.  This to me is the essence of adoption.  Loss and gain.

It is a deeply spiritual bond.  A forging.  I believe we are spiritually and eternally bound, not only to our two children, but to their families and their ancestors as well.  This bond is imperfection made beautiful.  Made perfect in the desire to love.

In human love, there is always failure and imperfection.  In my own love, there will always be imperfections, places my love isn't able to heal or to reach or places I am not willing or able to go.  There will be times I fail. 

So I entrust my children to God's perfect love and to the perfect love of Mary, Mother of Jesus and to the love of her husband, Saint Joseph, an adoptive father himself.

I pray that they make up for all the ways this world and the people in it and love itself, are lacking.