In two blinks and a frantic turnaround, it will be Christmas and then 2024. It feels impossible. It feels awful. It is… really hard. I knew that as Christmas got closer and closer, the pain of Ken’s absence would be more real. I don’t think I expected it to be this hard…

I’ve found ways to reflect and focus on the meaning of Advent. It’s been a journey (which you may have read about for the last 3 weeks.) Today I worked on a present for a family member, one that I need to finish ASAP (so that… ahem… I can send it!) I caught myself wondering if Ken would like one, too. It was just a routine thought, a habit of thinking of him, of loving him.

It’s a habit I haven’t broken yet… painfully so. Love is not without risks, and at times hardly seems worth it. But the rewards far outweigh the tears.

I was reminded of a song Michael Kelly Blanchard wrote called Love After All. I heard the song at a concert many years ago, and as usual, it was the poetry that first captured my attention. I had to go digging to find it, as the album is long gone from my playlist!

Love in these days is a dangerous dream,
Lonely and crazed like a dying bird’s scream,
Broken in ways that are hard to redeem.
Love is a dangerous dream…
Love in these times is a gamble at best,
On the frontlines without a bulletproof vest,
Riddled with crimes that infect and infest,
Love is a gamble at best.

But I still believe in Love after all
Though to have it, you’ll bleed,
To find it, you’ll fall.
Every soul needs to be caught by its Call,
Caught by Love after all.

Love in these days” has taken shape in the kindness of friends. During a week with kids on the border of bat-shit crazy (let every parent and teacher say “AMEN”) two friends, with kids in tow, came over to haul a heavy mattress upstairs for me. After soccer practice and before they fed their kids to then fold them into bed, they showed up. The enormity of that gift of Love only hit me after they left and Stewart came creeping back into sight.

And over the last year… WOW. The multiple ways that family and friends have showered me and the family with gifts of love blows my mind. Meals, rides, practical helps of all kinds, listening, praying, sending encouraging notes, and offering true comfort and compassion. Love has showed up at my doorstep… day after day, week after week. I’m amazed and so very, very grateful.

The fourth week of Advent is about the Incarnation of Love in the coming of the Christ. A gift that crosses the Divine-Human barrier and inexplicably helps us see not only that we are Loved, but that we can Love, too.

For many of us, Love is clearer when we DON’T have it. We see what we’re missing. We feel the loss of being fully accepted and valued, just as we are. In some corners of the Church today, there are a lot of limits placed who and how someone is lovable by the Divine. Lines are drawn. Sermons are shouted. Dogma is tattooed onto the human psyche; dogma that leaves a painful trail.

This kind of “Love” — the kind that comes with a rule book and hyper-religious superiority — is chasmically * separated from what God invites us to participate in with others… across generations and places.

(* is that a word? It is now…)

In the Gospel reading for this week, Mary exults in God’s great faithfulness after the angel Gabriel appeared to her to tell her she would give birth to the Christ:

…for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name;
indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:49-53, NRSV)

This the kind of Divine Love that welcomes, feeds, lifts up, reassures, and supports. It smacks down the proud and power-loving rulers (let the power-hungry beware!) It reminds us to fear God (best translated “revere” God) above the imagination of our own hearts. (I don’t know about you, but that’s not easy for me.)

Love after all is there, walking, crying, listening, helping, praising, complaining, questioning, stumbling, and trusting that God is present. Always…

Carrie Newcomer sang in You Can Do This Hard Thing that when we are honest about the hard times, it’s like hearts hung on the clothesline. The dirty (or clean) laundry is flapping away for everyone to see. It’s out there — vulnerable, real, a little tattered, and commonplace. When it gets down to it, living and loving people means that we will each face hard, impossible things. But, she says, impossible takes just a little more time.

However you are doing with your impossible, hard thing, know that I’m with you.

Have a blessed Christmas. May Love find you in the weepy, grimy, smelly places where Jesus waits.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!