Esther, Ruth, Naomi, Rachel, Elizabeth, Anna, Hannah, Sarah–I love learning about these mothers of our faith! I love thinking about the women who have gone before us. And, I aspire to learn from them.

Blame it on my old soul. In the spirit of matriarchs, I decided to forgo the perfectly curated greenery image for this post, because at this point in the winter, this Christmas Cactus is a show-stopper in our front window: Coral & fuchsia in a season of muted browns and grays. 

I particularly love it because it reminds me of two important matriarchs in the life of our family. 

The pink cactus had been a Valentines day gift for my Grandmother in a cold and dreary Wisconsin February; she died the following day. It blooms each year in memory of her anniversary, without fail.

The coral cactus belonged to my husband’s grandmother and bloomed in her sunny dining room window in rural Indiana. When I received it after her funeral, I knew exactly where it would go.

Mingled up in my remembrance flower pot.

Besides the geographic distance between these two, I’m not sure these gals would have been natural friends: 

Sassy and introverted, proud Irish red-head until the end; motorcycle-rider, meets Church secretary and card shark, who was known to mow the lawn in pumps.

And yet, their legacies are permanently intertwined. In thinking of them, I was reminded of this excerpt from a collection of stories on women’s friendship in the rural west:

“I was doing my usual Cinco de Mayo garden digging when I unearthed two carrots–deep-buried, bright orange surprises with green stems. So, of course, I stopped digging to taste them: very woody but full-bodied carrot taste. 

Chewing on this fascinating find made me think of my granddaughter Alissa’s other grandmother, the one who teaches her how to scrape, slice, dice, blend, mash, and puree carrots. If Alissa were here with me now, the only tool we’d use before chomping on the carrots would be the garden hose.

And with the munching came the revelation: kids need both kind of grandmas. They need a grandma who teaches them to cook and a grandma who will eat anything; one to learn from and one to practice on…

There ought to be a word in English like the Spanish comadre; a word that means you recognize the bond, you declare the relationship to your child’s mother-in-law. Her hand raised the child your child fell in love with. There ought to be a word in English that kisses that hand, that says thank you for giving all the tools, skills, and love you have to help my child and yours build their life together; the differences between us, the diversity in us, only expand their horizons.”

– Claudette Ortiz, Woven on the Wind.

Variety of blooms

I love her recognition of needing a variety of things. I love that we can learn from Hannah’s prayerfulness, Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, Esther’s wisdom, Sarah’s faithfulness, Rachel’s patience, Elizabeth’s trust.

And, I love the way these distinct lives or our fore bearers have begun to blossom together, if even metaphorically.

Now each year, all February long, life erupts, vibrant colors mingling. I love the thought that in our home, we hold onto something tangible they cared for, too. Of course, the houseplant isn’t the only thing; Their great-grandchildren bounce off the walls of this same room, proof positive that the legacy of these two women, who never met, lives on. As long as I live, I don’t think I will walk past the darned thing without being struck by the fact that these strangers, have unintentionally left behind a stunning heritage.

Would that I heed their thriving witness and seek to bloom with unlikely “comadres” in all circumstances.

Feast of St. Valentine

I hope you have a blessed Valentine’s day tomorrow. If you are in the market for any ways to spread the love, I’m writing on learning to be neighbor, inspired by one of my favorite books for Blessed Is She, today…. 

Admittedly, this vision of neighborliness is my New Year’s resolution. It does not have to be yours, too. The good news is, it can take as much or little time as you have. You do not have to be wealthy/single/married/empty-nesting/young/old to do this and do it well. Keep reading

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Happy New Year!

I hope this finds you adjusting to writing 20 instead of 19—or 2020 as my oldest warned me, so that time travelers do not come in and try to re-write history by post-dating my entries.

Food for thought, anyway.

It seems books are the way that I often choose to get my footing in a new year. I load up my library cart and hope that they popular books get delivered to me at a pace with which I can keep up (this is never how it works). I love making lists of the books I didn’t get to last year, suggestions I’ve received, or things I hope to learn about in the coming year—so if you have some recommendations, please share!

My top five books from 2019 include:

Island of Sea Women, The Nightingale, Educated, Everything Happens for a Reason & Other Lies I’ve Loved, Where the Crawdads Sing

In this library cart stuffing-frenzy, I also added Miss. Rumphius for our kiddos and was delighted by her message which I haven’t heard in ages:

Essentially when Alice Rumphius tells her artist grandfather her plans for her life she describes going to faraway places, and growing old beside the sea. He tells her that there is a third thing she must do: ‘Make the world more beautiful.’ She agrees, but has no idea what that might mean and the story ensues.

Like any good book reading mama, I asked the girls what they thought they might like to do to make the world more beautiful. Just like Alice, they sort of shrugged and said they couldn’t think of anything. As I closed the book, my oldest asked what I am doing to make the world more beautiful…

Funny how often we assume children’s books are for children.

I haven’t given her my answer yet, but I am savoring the question. The timing is ripe with possibility. Whether or not I’ve started with the task, it is liberating because we can start anytime, or every year–every day, even.

The short list for today includes:

           -Raising kiddos

           -Raising bees/flowers (as a side, here is a really thought-provoking article about modern           beekeeping)

          – On good days, sharing words in hopes that they land where they’re most needed

How about you? What beautiful thing(s) would you choose to leave as your legacy?

*For Miss. Rumphius, it’s lupines.

Prayer pledge

The image that has had my attention lately, is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Admittedly it isn’t one I have spent a great deal of time with before, which is perhaps why I’ve been captivated. This is the theme for the 2020 prayer pledge for the month of January, put on through Blessed Is She. I am excited to share with you that I was able to contribute the reflections for the final week of January. It has been a real gift to read other writer’s insights on the same theme, which helps to broaden my own awareness of Christ’s penetrating love. (It’s not too late to sign up if you’d like to follow along! Subscribe here for daily prayer pledge reflections).

Whether you are seeking beauty in book lists, seed catalogs, cherished photographs, prayer, music,  dear friends; I pray that the New Year will provide a foundation for those things, and an invitation for new ideas!

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

-John Muir

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Lastly, if you’re already looking ahead to Lent next month and would like to participate in the Lenten journal through Blessed Is She, my friend Laura Kelly Fanucci is the reflection writer, and if you have read her work, you know it is soul-stirring. Orders fill up fast, so don’t wait. If you order, please consider using my affiliate link—thanks!

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Today we attended a Baptism for the newest member of the Body of believers. We also acknowledge that our firstborn has been a Christian for several years—part of the body of believers. What a magnificent and challenging reality that is to live into. We know this because there are days this reality is difficult for us to live into (am I right?). It probably feels less than magnificent, too. That is why we continually reach for books, music, Sacraments, service projects—anything beyond our own words to illustrate and reiterate the importance and beauty of what this means for her—and for us.

Complex & beautiful

Today’s feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is an annual reminder to me that what we have asked that our child be a part of is as complex as it is beautiful. I literally remember squirming at my kitchen table as I scheduled her baptism date because it seemed like kind of a depressing day to welcome my child into the Church (as if the reality of Mary’s suffering or the Paschal Mystery are any less relevant on any other day). I distinctly remember having this impulse not to have her initiated into something that foreshadowed…heartbreak.

Given a healthy amount of distance and afterthought, I can hear my good intentions as well as the complete backwardness of this line of thinking.

This faith that she has been baptized into is not a secret weapon against suffering. Applied appropriately, it is more or less a guarantee that heartbreak will be a part of the equation for her at some point, when the world she hopes for and the one she sees, do not touch. What I think this faith is, is our best attempt to be able to look reality in the face and remain moored to a foundation bigger and more hopeful than ourselves in the midst of that suffering. In dynamic and nuanced ways, perhaps we are condoning for ourselves (and our children) an intentional experience of wrestling with the things that would otherwise break us and leave us calloused if it weren’t for the truth we hold at our core that this is not the whole story.

Think for a minute about the complexities of truths that we are holding in tension right now—maybe just skim the headlines from today.

These are the days I imagine my own mooring is at work, and probably if we’re honest, when we do the most wrestling. Suddenly, the occasion to celebrate and remember her entrance into the church becomes an opportunity for me to renew my own baptismal call as ‘priest, prophet and king.’ I know she’ll enjoy her baptismal dinner and re-visiting pictures of the day she doesn’t remember.

Saying ‘yes.’

More than that I want her to be surrounded with healthy, whole folks walking around with their hearts outside of their chests, ready to give them away to people in dire need of love, acknowledgment, eye-contact. Although we are still talking about my daughter’s baptism, I recognize that ultimately I am talking about my own as well. I also know that I am of far greater use with my heart engaged than I am with it tucked safely away—hard as that is to put into practice. So I’ll leave you with Annie Dillard’s words that encapsulate the courage necessitated by this bold ‘yes.’

Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”

—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.

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This summer has literally been the summer of the bumble bees around here. As a rule, I am always on the search for my girls (honey bees, not kids) out and about, but there is an added layer of delight when I find the busy girl to be one of the bumble bee family. I love their fuzzy bodies, the loud noises they make as they slowly cruise by, along with their gentle demeanor.

Due to some combination of last winter’s birdseed and my desire to grow the largest flowers humanly possible, our backyard has become a menagerie of goldfinches, bees, and squirrels. So much so that I had to cut stalks down to allow entrance into our compost bin, chicken coop, and to reach my beehives. Now I’m collecting sunflower seed heads to prevent an even greater patch of brilliant gold next year.

I may have overdone it a bit.

It is exciting because some species of bumble bees have been placed on the endangered species list. So finding an abundance of them is a good problem to have. 

Most notably, bumblers are almost exclusively responsible for the tomato crop. They are the only bees with the vibrating method of pollen collection–which is responsible for the bumble noise where they derive their name. Without bumble bees, in some locations people have taken on the role of pollinators.

These creatures are so highly specialized and fit for the work that they do, that Walmart now sells pollination wands for regions that don’t have enough pollinators. It’s a wonder then, that bumble means ‘to move or act in a confused manner.’

Bumbling

But, I resonate with the description a bit. Even as a write, I’ve got two other projects sitting open on the table next to me that I continue to rotate between. If someone were to have tracked our movement as a family this summer, it could easily be described as bumbling. Never before (and maybe never again) have we had the good fortune of moving around in such a manner. It was fun without a doubt, but coming home to the routine of school again has made me a bit discombobulated and clumsy.

Yesterday for example as I inserted my Love and Logic strategy of letting my kids learn the consequences of their actions and they were both late to school. The night before when I spilled my entire water bottle in my lap and sat in standing water on my way to church and walked in with pants wet down to my knees and up my back, or bringing a comforter to the laundromat without quarters or soap and making several trips to successfully wash one blanket.

I was discouraged by all of these events.  But I imagine there is a deeper truth hiding in the brambles.

Rather than bemoan the many hats I’m wearing right now, and probably you are too, I’m trying to notice the way that only I can accomplish the tasks that I’ve been assigned. Not that I’m doing them any better or worse than someone else–in fact most days my approach is neither aerodynamic or graceful, but purposeful and hopefully, fruitful.

I’ve probably exhausted the bee metaphors in this space, but if you’re needing encouragement in your clumsy efforts this week, channel your inner bee, especially if she’s a bumbler!

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There’s been a long radio silence on my end—not for any particular reason, just the ebb and flow of the end of the school year and change of seasons that make a gal’s creative juices available at all times to all people and my words don’t always make it out onto the keyboard.

I hope this finds you well and easing into June—the way I suspect June is supposed to be entered into.

Rested

May has held a long list of guests in our humble abode, and it’s been a treat. As much as I would like to change some of the dimensions of our space, I keep hearing from the people we invite under this roof, that they’re comfortable and rested when they leave, and there’s not much of a higher compliment I can think to receive. Fresh eggs, honey, and couches go a long way, apparently. So, when the itch to look at bigger spaces, or more updated floor plans strikes, I’m trying to remind myself of the gaggle of folks who have commented (without prompting) that they aren’t coming to see our home, anyway.

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• We split our bee hive in May—which means we now have two (!), and they still swarmed –so we were busy with our busy bees for a few days.
• We’re in the throes of Vacation Bible School, which packs a punch for being a morning camp!
• I’m sticking to my first ever, self-imposed summer schedule to coordinate our comings/goings, as opposed to my own free spirit that doesn’t mind the daily question: What are we going to do today?
• Doing hard things

One of the things on our list is Mass one day each week—not because it comes naturally, but because Mass is actually still a challenge for our gang. Mostly this has been successful, as our parish has a beautiful chapel where we celebrate weekday Masses, and the shorter version of Sunday helps, too (most of the time).

Community

Last week we walked in during the opening song, as usual. Breezing by families with many (more) children who seem capable of gauging time—unlike the mother of my children. Frustrated as I was by our inability to arrive promptly, I was touched by the community we found gathered that day: A lady in my Bible study, with a wonderful Polish accent, pulled out chairs for us to sit with her; my kids exchanged the sign of peace with my good friend’s parents, a woman from my bee club caught me to talk bees over donuts; ladies in line for donuts caught wind of our plan to play at the park, and gave us directions, since it was right behind her home.

Nothing groundbreaking or spectacular, but I think what I was struck by was a deep sense of place. It has taken a long time to notice this feeling, and I’m not sure it’s a permanent fixture, but I noticed it, and I liked it, and I hope that from time to time, I contribute to it.

Pentecost always comes at a such a timely place in the year, doesn’t it? It’s the literal breath of fresh air that pushes us into a new opportunity and pace.

Recommended Reading

In other news, I am part of a launch team for a new book by Shannon Evans, an author I really enjoy. It’s called,Embracing Weakness: The Unlikely Secret to Changing the World.  She writes from her own experience as a protestant missionary turned Catholic Worker, and includes insights from wisdom figures like Jean Vanier, Fr. Greg Boyle and Brene’ Brown. Beautiful, introspective thoughts and questions worth sitting with, so add it to your summer reading list. *As a side, I’ve discovered my library has a ‘Suggested for Purchase’ page on their website. I have requested A LOT of titles for purchase and have never been turned down, so even if your book budget is low, consider requesting from your library so you (and others) still get a chance to enjoy.

That’s all I’ve got. Happy June. Happy reading & (hopeful) slowing down.

Cheers to unannounced visits and backyard iced tea.

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The season of Lent is often referred to as a journey or a desert—a place to be navigated as foreigners on the search. The Old Testament stories remind us that there is no preparing for the events that unfold, or how they unfold in our own hearts. I’ve mentioned it before, but if you need something to get you in the spirit as we re-visit Passover, I highly recommend this poem by Alla Bozarth-Campbell.

Here we are standing on the last sturdy ground for the next three days. The week will continue, surely, but it begins to take on a somber tone as we enter Triduum—the three holiest days of the Church’s year.

Tomorrow evening, around the globe, the Church will gather at dusk, roll back its sleeves, and return to the surprising practice that jump started the first Easter. The Church will take on the posture of servanthood as it washes the feet of its community and breaks bread together.

This is the posture with which we’re reminded to begin: kneeling in service

Next, we move into the harsh reality of Good Friday. Fasting, silence, hearing Christ’s passion, perhaps participating in Stations of the Cross, Adoration of the Cross, Mass with no consecration—the only day of the year this does not take place.

The stage is set for despair.

The following night, we’ll gather again on the vigil of the third day—could it be? Candles blaze, lilies permeate the space, physical darkness turning to lights bright as day, banners, singing, incense, Baptism, and Alleluias resound.

This is no time for despair! In fact, we’re about to enter the longest period of celebration of the Church year—50 days of Easter!

This synopsis is not required for you, I know—we’ve done this dozens of times, right? And yet it’s the annual celebration that moves us, and flies by until we encounter it again the following year.

Both/And

I’ve been marveling about this despair-turned-joy whiplash for a month or so now, feeling a nudge to enter into this week with joy and expectation, certainly; as well as a deeper awareness of those for whom the enthusiasm of Easter Sunday falls squarely in their experience of heartache. It’s offering me an invitation to be ready to sidle on up to heartbreak, and to celebrate resurrection when it comes—even out of season. To read more on this, hop over to the Blessed Is She blog.

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Grateful for the space

I’m finally sitting down to write after nearly a week of making room for a voracious stomach bug in this house. In a series of unfortunate events, my husband and I both woke to this little demon on the same night–hours apart from one another. This novel occurrence hasn’t come up before and I’m leaning hard on the hope that it doesn’t happen again. For as much Lysol as we’ve employed recently, everyone took their turn, and the latest victim is upstairs napping, now.

I’ll spare you the details, and only reflect on the fact that there’s nothing like being (temporarily) incapacitated and doing any kind of thinking when you otherwise ought to be sleeping; no time to contemplate the big and small things in life like that when faced with cold, white porcelain.

And so it is this week that I find myself immensely grateful for my washer and dryer, for Gatorade and the space and time to be sick.

These wheels probably began spinning while our small church community took our first shift at the emergency overnight shelter last week, hosted in a local church basement when the temps dip below 20 degrees. When a frail, sickly, guest arrived, we quickly realized how ill-equipped we were for any of the 37 patrons to be ill. We had access to little more than a bathroom to offset the discomfort of being ill or weakened from the elements.

Thankfully the biggest requirement for our guests that evening was rest. But where can these folks have the good fortune of getting sick? Or put their feet up during the day at 6 months pregnant?

Life-giving rhythm

I had originally planned to write about the beauty of the Zumba community that I’ve joined in the New Year. (Though honestly, I haven’t been up for that kind of gyration again just yet). I was struck one day last week about the way I’ve come to look forward to these hours as the most rhythmic, energizing, and diverse of my week.

Being a spoiled stay-at-home-mom, with an occasional window when my kids are in school, there is really no telling who I’ll find when (and if) I head to the gym: retired folks, people who work night shift, college students, etc. I expected an older crowd and wondered if I’d find camaraderie in that space. I have been so pleasantly surprised by whom I have found on these occasions—mostly women (but not all), older than me (but not all), folks with really great dance moves and people with zero inhibitions, people with differing abilities, and more cultural diversity in one room than in all communities in my life, combined.

So it is giving me life in lots of ways. I love the hugs and the music and my energy when I get to go and have been reflecting on what a gift this time is to me, probably unbeknownst to any of them.

Compelled toward gratitude

One of our go-to pastimes when we’re sick in this house is National Geographic’s: Planet Earth. Somehow I can justify binge-worthy amounts of screen time, when we can simultaneously escape our condition by beholding the wonder and beauty of the world. It’s such a grounding experience to be reminded that the world is so much bigger than what I regularly experience. In an unexpected way, each of these encounters has done that for me recently and I am grateful.

In an ironic, or providential bit of timing, I offered a reflection of the Feast of St. Blaise—on both the blessing of throats and the practice of being called out of ourselves in a way that delights the Creator. Hop on over to read the rest at Blessed Is She.

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***But wait, there’s more! For those of you interested in a Lenten Reflection book to walk you through Lent this season (Ash Wednesday is March 6th this year), the Blessed Is She journal went live last week and you can purchase on pre-order  discount and receive free shipping, here!

The post An ode to Zumba and other things saving me right now appeared first on Unexpected Honey.

May has been a beautiful, emotional kind of month already.

I told my husband on Thursday night that I feel like I’m in the middle of so many pieces of my heart right now…

An empty beehive.

An invitation to a writer’s workshop–contingent upon someone else dropping out.

Another birthday for my oldest.

Another mother’s day where my desire and my reality, don’t match (which makes me feel simultaneously thankful and selfish).

Accompanying my Goddaughter through the Sacrament of Confirmation very soon, and grappling with what that looks like to a younger child as the Denver Archdiocese has returned to the restored order of Sacraments and now Confirms third-graders.

Liminal space

This is the definition of liminal space, I’m sure, and I recognize both its necessity and potential for growth—I’d just prefer to understand it in hindsight rather than slogging through these inconvenient pulls of my heart, as ache and change tug at one another.

Swarm season

Early Friday morning, I got a message with an address, a picture of a bee swarm, and the encouragement to go and get it.

Imagining what this process would look like, I grabbed everything I could imagine one might need to wrangle 20,000 honeybees in a tree, borrowed a truck, dropped my littles off, and showed up at the address. It was easy to find in the tree next to the mailbox. I could see it from the road. I just had to stand there for a minute to take it in.

I suited up, because although generally docile during a swarm, I give critters credit to identify a rookie when they see one. Gently as I could, I swept the humming, living organism into my swarm-catching bucket and waited for the cluster of displaced bees to re-form in the tree. It was a little like catching water in a sieve—for every bee that landed in my bucket, it felt like others flew out. Eventually it dawned on me to leave the bucket open and let the bees communicate with each other. When I did this, I noticed that instead of going back to the tree, the displaced bees were turning toward their sisters in the open bucket.

After putting the bucket into the back of the truck, I drove six miles home to deliver them to my waiting hive, full of beeswax and honey from my previous hive. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Had you only known that this was on the horizon, would you have clung so insistently to that limb?’

How often am I this stubborn bee?

At one point, I tried to record what it sounded like to be in the midst of all these tiny, flying bodies. The video is not clear at all, it’s so shaky that the only thing it demonstrates is just how much adrenaline was surging through me while in the midst of this potentially scary situation.

There is something surreal about standing in the middle of thousands of stinging creatures, and recognizing both real danger and complete peace.

Thinking about it now, I can imagine the metaphor in it for me, too. God is the gentle beekeeper, slowly coaxing, patiently waiting and joyfully receiving every last one of us.

This is the truth I’ve been needing to recognize:

Life where there was no life.

Patience where I want to rush.

Opportunity to stand in the very place that  seems threatening, and feel held.

Maybe this isn’t the heart-swelling mother’s day weekend story you were expecting. Me neither. And, there’s a grace to be found in this unexpected place.

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Blessings this weekend on you, and all the women who transform the world around them with their love.

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As I write, the spring sun chasing snow from the shadows of our yard. We’re tending four, adolescent chickens in our basement until it is warm enough to send them outside. Fellow bee club members are offering a crash-course in swarm-catching as my beloved beehive succumbed to a mite infestation last week.  I’m devouring Christie Purifoy’s gorgeous Roots & Sky, while plotting a renegade perennial pollinator garden on the ugly strip of dirt that lines the street behind our home.

In short, I’m itching for spring.

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It being Holy week and all, I figured: Why not sit a spell and consider what is about to unfold, and already unfolding?

Today is Holy Thursday—Maundy Thursday if you prefer. Actually, I just learned that ‘maundy’ is derived from the Latin, ‘mandatum,’ which means commandment. How striking that the day is commemorated for the commandment given the disciples to become the servant to one another…and that I am just now unpacking what that powerful title conveys.

So when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do

-John 13: 12-15

Perspective

It’s been a year already since last Easter, and I’m anxious to embrace this Triduum in a new way. I can’t unlearn how viscerally or spiritually painful Good Friday can be, or how stark the contrast can feel between Friday and Sunday—a pace too break-neck for casual participation. Having had a year to sit with the Good Friday experience, I’m hoping that this year, I can enter into the week mindful of those for whom this day is impossibly difficult—a confirmation of hurt and brokenness, while begging for the grace of an Easter Sunday of celebration of resurrection.

If you’re finding yourself resonating with and struggling to move from the scenes or death and humiliation of Christ’s passion, to the joy of new life this Easter, know that I’m holding you with me in a particular way.

(Consequently I’m hoping to do this with children in-tow—flying solo—as my husband recently joined the choir to get his Gregorian chant fix. I’ll let you know how that goes…)

Holy Thursday

I’m also sharing my thoughts on a different angle of Holy Thursday on the Blessed Is She blog, today.

Blessings to you during these Holy days.

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Holy ordinary

Advent breezed in this weekend without the pomp and circumstance we might be inclined to give it, just as it does every year—with dimmed lights, flickering candles and space for quiet—everyday reminders to help carve out space for the holy in our ordinary. Even more fittingly, we celebrated the arrival of our Church’s’ newest member through the Sacrament of Baptism—appropriately embarking into Advent on the first day of her journey of faith.

This crowd rose early and headed west toward the mountains to cut down our first Rocky-mountain-grown Christmas tree on Sunday. And wouldn’t you know it, the clouds shone purple, pink and gold like they were in on the Liturgical celebration; like they do this time of year. I love when that happens. We hopped into the car just as the radio program for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas performance began its broadcast . When we lost reception, we turned off the radio and watched the mountains brighten in the rising sun, kiddos fading in and out in the back seat. It may have taken thirty-three years to figure it out, but this is an ideal way to begin the season of Advent.

Hopping out of the car, our driving legs were immediately put to work as we began to climb and search for the perfect tree. Again, we were surrounded by the quiet, the peace of it all and the timelessness of creation. Amateurs that we are, we parked our car at a campground on the very last weekend for Christmas tree-cutting. This led to more searching and more piggy-back rides up the popular slopes, but we did find a tree. It’s rustic in its mountain-grown build, but this reminder of evergreen hope is exactly what I’m hoping to emulate this Advent: simple, un-cluttered, beauty that points to something greater.

(Now, enter my baby’s 104 degree fever.)

Fevers are my undoing. They terrify me—they make me question all manner of things from the accuracy of my thermometer, to the hours of urgent care, to my abilities as a mother and the wonder of the human body. Fevers don’t mess around. They give me a repeated sense of my own limitedness, and I don’t care much for that reminder. Give me vomit, diapers, teething and insomnia, but please don’t ask me to care for those suffering from fevers. I recognize that this is small potatoes compared to what so many care-givers have learned to take in stride and I have all the more respect for each of you when I reach this care-giving threshold.

Be ready

It turns out however, that treating a fever in someone we love is another way to welcome Advent. Not one I had planned, one I’d recommend, and certainly not one I’d care to repeat anytime soon. However, I can’t remember another Advent Sunday I have spent sleeping so lightly, hearing every stir, creeping out just to check, and sitting quietly in the dark in prayer over the one I held in my arms. Now that the night has passed and the fever has broken, I can recognize the invitation for what it is—the eagerness and attentiveness with which to seek Emmanuel.

Stay awake, be ready.

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