This post is part of a synchroblog. December’s topic is Advent as a Journey. You can find a list of all the participants here, and I will put them at the end of this post when they are all in.
I’m trying to picture Mary on her donkey, passing the time on her journey to Bethlehem reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting God. I’m guessing it would be strong on nutrition, weight gain, and why you shouldn’t travel far from home in your ninth month (oops), but maybe a little weak on the whole sword-piercing-your-heart thing.
I don’t know what Mary expected her son to be, as she travelled toward Bethlehem. She had a nine-month meditation on carrying treasure in a jar of clay, but I wonder if she even had the beginning of an inkling of how different Jesus’ path was going to be than what many dreamed of for their messiah.
I’m pretty sure I would not have had a clue. I say that, because of all the expectations that have been challenged and knocked down in my life, the ones that have most taken my breath away have been my expectations about God.
Sometimes the lessons of un-learning our expectations are little, and we can take them in stride. Sometimes we fall down and have to get back up again after our hopes fail us. Sometimes you get not only the rug, but also the floor and the earth pulled out from under you and it feels like you are floating through space with no way of orienting yourself. Option number three is what my last few years have felt like.
For years, I thought I was building my life on Jesus and on truth, but I was really building on the expectation that God would bring about the internal change in my and others’ lives that would stop needless pain. It wasn’t that I expected bad things not to happen, or for life not to hurt, but I did expect healing for those internal wounds that get in the way of love and relationship with God, others, and self.
The recipe for collapse had to do with sinking into despair over personal struggles of my own, pouring my heart into friends whose internal suffering was not easing, sprinkled with an unhealthy helping of a too-fast pace of life, and a pinch of health problems. When one of those hurting friends called me to help intervene in an urgent and traumatic crisis–it was the blow that knocked the hope out of me. What happened that day seemed to sum up the failure of everything I thought God had promised.
Dr. Brene Brown calls the process that followed “unravelling,” and I totally agree. I felt the snap when the thread broke that was holding my worldview together, and the yarn has continued to unwind and unravel as I see expectations and beliefs that I previously thought were certain disappear.
The thing is, when you knit a sweater that turns out to have three arms and no neck, you will be a lot better off in the long run if you unravel it than if you try to wear it. I consider this process that I’ve been going through to be very good, though it still brings tears to my eyes to talk about the loss involved in having banked on hopes that God did not inspire.
All this reminds me of the road to Bethlehem–of Mary, not knowing the pain involved in her blessing; of the Jewish people on the long journey toward the messiah, hoping for a different type of salvation than they were given; of those who were looking for a king and found an impoverished baby.
For me, advent this year is a time of reflecting on expectation. It is a time for looking at what I have expected Jesus to be, at ways that wrong expectations have been undone, and at ways that I have lost hope. I actually don’t have a new set of things that I am certain of, and I don’t know what to hope for from God. But I do have a sense of expectation…that I believe he’s there, even if it’s been quiet for quite some time, and that I believe something is coming, like an unborn baby. And like expecting that baby, I am now trying to hold any ideas about how he will come with an open hand so that when he comes, I can see him for who he is, not for what I want him to be.
- John C. O’Keefe – The Season of Adventure
- George at The Love Revolution – The Weak Ghosts of Advent
- Peter at Emerging Christian – Expanding Our Experience of the Advent Journey
- Beth at Beth Stedman.com – Experiencing Advent With A Toddler
- Alan at The Assembling Of The Church – Walking Through Advent Today
- Steve at Emergent Kiwi – Am I Traveling Well?
- Wendy at View From The Bridge – Yearning For a Lived Theology
- Annie at Marginal Theology – Limping Along
- Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting
- Jeff at My Adventures – Journeys and Destinations
- kathy at carnival in my head – making room for the unexpected
- Sonja at Calacirian – Road To Nowhere
- Steve at Khanya – Advent Synchroblog
- Beth at The Virtual Teahouse – Clear-Eyed Gaze of a Stranger
- Phil at Square No More – O Antiphon #1 – This is the first of nine antiphones. Please check Phil’s blog Square No More regularly for additional updates with the additional 8 antiphones.
- Peggy at Abisomeone – Wandering With The Waiting Abbess
- Cathryn at Love Fiercely – An Advent Prayer
- Sonnie at A Piece of My Mind – Christmas WILL Happen
- Liz at Grace Rules – Advent – A Journey of Awakening
- Andrew at Tall Skinny Kiwi – God Came Near
[…] christen hansel – advent-expecting and unexpecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
I wish I could come sit and listen to the whole story (that is, if I could keep my mouth shut while you tell it all!)
Much of what you’ve written resonates with me.
Thanks, Marcy! I’d be happy to tell you more. Thanks for your email, too!
Like Marcy said – much of what you have written resonates with me too. Of course the circumstances are different but I have been through my own unraveling and like you I don’t have a lot that I am certain about but I also believe that God is present. I know the grief of realizing that what you believe no longer rings true. I am sorrowful for the pain and disappointment that you have experienced but believe that God is with us through whatever we go through. I pray that this Advent season will bring you hope and comfort.
It is comforting when other people have gone through the same things. Thanks, Liz.
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
[…] christen hansel – advent-expecting and unexpecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
Love the image of the three armed sweater and the need to unravel. I have been there! Unraveling is certainly not pleasant but I sure am grateful not to have my head in an arm hole the rest of my life. Great post! Thanks for sharing.
I’m with you on that, Wendy! Glad to go through change as much as it hurts at the time. Thanks!
christen, so good. i love that thought of unraveling, too..i keep reflecting on this idea of unexpected and how so much of what our faith taught us was to clearly expect a, b, and c to happen if we did d, e, and f. and how always, when i reflect on the gospels and the upside down weird ways of Jesus, beginning with his birth just how unexpected and against the grain of what’s “supposed to be right” he always is. i had this thought this week, too, nothing new but it just stuck out to me for some reason–that maybe wholeness is simply accepting brokenness. love to you from CO
Kathy, I thought it was so cool that your post was about the unexpected too. Thanks for the thought about wholeness. I think you’re right. Funny how progress often means waiting, and movement means stillness and wholeness means letting yourself be broken. It’s so often counterintuitive, but makes perfect sense in a heart sort of way once you’re experiencing it.
Head in an arm hole — I love that extension of the image!
Kathy, I blame the Gospels sometimes for these weird expectations we have. Jesus is the very one who said if we tell the mountain to go jump in the sea, and believe it will, then it will. And so on.
I know what you mean, Marcy, and I go back and forth on various aspects of Christianity the religion that I have found harmful–is the message flawed or the interpretation? I think a lot of what the church does with Jesus’ words and teachings is akin to trying to make poetry into a legal document…and then we wonder why everything doesn’t fit into the paradigm. And having been immersed in the church my whole life, I find it very hard to separate the message from the messengers and their interpretations. Still trying to sort that out. Meanwhile, I’m trying to rest in not knowing and not being certain.
Yes — exactly. And it’s a scary process, venturing onto that slippery slope we’ve been warned about.
If we don’t take Jesus’ (and other biblical writers’) words at face value, we risk ignoring or neglecting what they’re plainly trying to say.
If we see reason to bend their words, because of what we see them (or others) saying in other biblical places, then we risk choosing the wrong bit to bend, or bending it the wrong way, and so on.
It’s all just so risky.
The Jesus-vs-Paul thing has been bothering me off and on for several years now (and it really doesn’t help that so many Christians just think those of us who see a divide are making things up or exaggerating), as well as the question of election and whether or not God loves the non-elect and all that.
To your reply to my previous comment, I would love to hear more, but I don’t have questions to ask (other than the ones in that email). If you would like to pretend I’m sitting on your couch and just start talking, please feel free!
Oh, and the sifting and separating is especially tricky when the people who seem wrong also seem worth highly esteeming — they are kind, they think, they care, they believe…
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]
[…] Christen at Greener Grass – Advent – Expecting and Un-Expecting […]