Advent

I spoke at the UCC church today. I said something like:

"Advent is about waiting. Sometimes all we can do is to wait in the darkness, feeling abandoned, isolated, that our lives have no meaning. We hide that pain and fear under our busy-ness and consumerism, but it may be better to accept it, to sit with it and try to remember that God is with us there in the darkness.

When my husband John was diagnosed with Parkinson's last spring, my first impulse was to do something. I did research on the internet, I suggested to the doctors medications to try. Sometimes that approach works--it had worked for me five years ago when I was diagnosed with diabetes and changed my way of eating and started exercising and ended up healthier than I had been in years. But sometimes we have to realize we can't fix it. Nothing I can do or he can do will change the course of John's illness. It has been a hard for me to take that in, to accept that."

I invited the other people present to speak if they wished of where they were waiting in the darkness, either in their personal lives or in the world.

The pastor spoke of our words as a lament, which she defined as speaking our pain to God with an expectation that God is listening.