Latent Possibilities

Friday, December 08, 2006

An Advent Devotion

"And Gabriel came to Mary and addressed her thus: 'Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!' Now, she was greatly troubled…"

Is there any who has not felt the fear of God?

I remember sitting on the hill of Hickory Hill Elementary in Papillion, a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska. A lonely teenager, I asked Jesus to come and sit beside me. When I heard the rustling of footsteps coming from a field behind me, I ran as fast as my feet would carry me. Who of us has not been troubled? Who of us has not run from God?

We don’t think this way often. We ignore God. But when we stop long enough to hear the silence, and when in that silence we admit the possibility of God, we know Mary’s worry. We too are greatly troubled.

This also is part of Advent, along with the waiting, the anticipation, the preparing. We are afraid of his coming. And we have good reason to be, for who are we but strangers to God? Who are we but those who have walked away and forgot God? And we all know how people treat strangers. We see it on the news. We notice the revulsion within ourselves.

Who are we that God would embrace us? And yet God does. There in God's embrace, and only there, is the salve to our great trouble--a divine womb of cosmic hospitality.

Two-Week Reflections

Lucas is about two weeks old, so let me jot down some bits here about what it's been like in the Allen household since his arrival.

First, BIG kudos to Alyssa's mom, Janet, who is staying with us for three weeks while we adjust. Jan has been a great help to all of us in so many ways. I'm so grateful for her. I only hope her exposure to our home has been positive by and large. We are not accustomed to having long-term guests; I hope she has found our home to be a hospitable place.

Lucas has his days and nights mixed up, so he sleeps all day and is wide awake most of the night. He fusses a bit anywhere between 10PM and 3AM, which meant my being up with him from 1:30 to 3:30 last night (er, morning). When he gets this way, which soothing method will work is a crap shoot, so I go through the list: hold him, hold him a different way, walk while holding him, kiss him all over his face (that's more for me than for him, I think), drop in the Fisher Price swing with New Age music and disco lights, feed him a bottle, swaddle him, change his diaper, and so on. Eventually one or another of these has an effect, at least for a while, and if he starts up again, it's to the list once more.

Nursing has been a challenge mainly because of the vast differences in all the advice you get from doctors, pediatricians, lactation consultants, family, and friends. Everybody has some "secret weapon" to share with us. Everyone is shocked that we're not doing this or that. It really is surprising just how personally invested other people seem to get about how we feed our child. Very strange. And frustrating. Well, actually it's maddening.

So Alyssa and I have more or less resolved to do our own thing. That seems to be working best for us.

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