Slowing down and thinking about the Advent season, leading directly into the celebration of a most wondrous birth....that of our Christ child. I am grateful for this season. It doesn't hurt the way it used to, Christmas is painful, but not the same sort of pain I am comfortable with. This year it is pain like labor, that of being stretched to the outer most comfort zone of myself, and not the pain of past hurts and grief, though that does show it self at times, usually when least expected.
I am grateful for the pain I am feeling this year, the pain of giving into the long quiet before a birth of new ideas, new lifestyles, new hope, new convictions, new habits in a New Year. Labor is painful, in my experience it has pushed me to go to my soul, deep in my spirit, to the inmost of my being, to the Spirit of God with a silent crying out to God...I have liked quiet in my labor. This labor of my spirit hasn't been much different, I have wanted to sink inside, to stay in my cozy clothes, read about the quiet things in life, meditate on the word and deal with the pain without words or audible groaning, but groaning there has been. I have groaned that I am not comfortable with who I am anymore, that I need more, that I wanna stretch and walk, I need to sing and draw. I am aching for good art, sweet music, peace that passes understanding and space to figure out all that God wants me to be. I am embracing children more tightly, while letting the loose at a speed that leaves me dizzy with confusion and question. My heart aches out for the child that Iwas, while my spirit reaches out to the woman I am finally becoming, I am both comfortable and most uncomfortable.....full of anticipation, laboring over my life. It isn't a burden or a heavy yolk, I know that this is from my Father, in this I find sincere comfort during the most uncomfortable pains, I know that God is producing in me a woman by His design, that will be born, that is being born out of this story, His story in me. I am drawn to the idea that Christ, the babe was born after a labor, on the back of a donkey, in a stinky stable.....to hang on a cross for the sins of the world. I am only being asked to become a new creation, to be available to the work in my spirit that a Godly woman would be born out into this world, making the Father proud. I will labor with gratitude.
