Hunger...
I think that's the only way I can really describe this feeling. I think it's the only way I can accurately assess the feeling of urgency in my heart that presses me to search and search.
This will be my second Christmas away from home. My second Christmas away from what is familiar, what is comfortable. Once again, the presents were ordered online instead of handpicked, to be opened via Skype with smiles instead of hugs in exchange for what is given and received.
I have described this separation as akin to having a hole in my heart. Some days the hole is small. I am busy with the daily activities of life, and the hole doesn't really hurt. But other times, the hole feels larger... birthdays, weddings, holidays, and one more picture that no matter how much I search, I simply cannot find myself.
There are times I have been accused of being flippant... of not showing emotion when I say good bye or brushing off the desires of family members and friends to visit, to return.
It's self-preservation really. I say good bye a lot, and with that comes the need to shut down because if every loss was mourned, then I would never recover. Is it healthy? Maybe, maybe not, but it works.
Yet sometimes I simply cannot ignore the ache... especially when life gets harder than usual, and I find myself longing for what is familiar.
And it is this desire that has left me with a hunger... a hunger for something more this season, this Christmas. Maybe it's because Christmas is the representation of all that is familiar and routine... the traditions, the family, the decorations, the stories.
I find myself listening to, craving Christmas music, wishing for the bitter cold and an occasion for hot chocolate, watching every Christmas movie I can get my hands on.
I am not sure why I feel like I need this so much.
It could be homesickness. It could be the body and the mind hitting a cultural wall.
Maybe it is a combination of the two.
Or maybe, just maybe, my heart longs for something deeper. Because I know that there should be something deeper... Christmas is a time meant for something deeper. It is a time to remember magic. It is a time to remember there is a deeper beauty in this world than I could ever imagine... a deeper beauty that my soul is desperate to grasp.
It reminds me of the longing, the ache of the world before the first Christmas. Four hundred years of silence before He spoke again. A people living in oppression. A world in darkness.
And then, the longing fulfilled with the entrance of a child to peasants, welcomed by the lowly and wrapped in rags.
In one entrance, the darkness was lifted and "a people walking in darkness have seen a great light".
In the past, there are different aspects of the Christmas story I focus on... the light of the Savior in a world of night, the story of a young girl who said yes even if she may not have understood.
Maybe this year, He is reminding me of the longing... what was the world like before the arrival?
This ache, because yes, this life is meant for so much more than what I am settling for... this life finds itself in the story of a God who became a child, grew into a man, and through death from redemption for one such as me.
This heart was meant to bend at the edge of the lowly stable, to rejoice in the glory of what began that night.
And I realize that so often I choose to live like a manger never happened and the silence is still ongoing.
Because yes, there is pain and despair in this world, but there is hope. And Christmas was meant to remind me that no matter how great the darkness, there is always hope because there is a God who whose to wrap my injured flesh around himself, breathe this air, and walk this ground.
I feel it as my heart learns to take the unfamiliar and draw it close... to find my new normal... to rejoice in my adopted family, realizing that I have been blessed with a heart attached to more than one place.
There will always be an ache as long as the heart must wait... because this wait is just a shadow of the ache all creation still awaits for the ultimate grand entrance that is still to come.
So I wait. I live, knowing the joy that has come, the joy of the present, the joy still to come.
But the longing will be fulfilled because the fulfillment has come.
And for this, even an aching heart can rejoice.
I think that's the only way I can really describe this feeling. I think it's the only way I can accurately assess the feeling of urgency in my heart that presses me to search and search.
This will be my second Christmas away from home. My second Christmas away from what is familiar, what is comfortable. Once again, the presents were ordered online instead of handpicked, to be opened via Skype with smiles instead of hugs in exchange for what is given and received.
I have described this separation as akin to having a hole in my heart. Some days the hole is small. I am busy with the daily activities of life, and the hole doesn't really hurt. But other times, the hole feels larger... birthdays, weddings, holidays, and one more picture that no matter how much I search, I simply cannot find myself.
There are times I have been accused of being flippant... of not showing emotion when I say good bye or brushing off the desires of family members and friends to visit, to return.
It's self-preservation really. I say good bye a lot, and with that comes the need to shut down because if every loss was mourned, then I would never recover. Is it healthy? Maybe, maybe not, but it works.
Yet sometimes I simply cannot ignore the ache... especially when life gets harder than usual, and I find myself longing for what is familiar.
And it is this desire that has left me with a hunger... a hunger for something more this season, this Christmas. Maybe it's because Christmas is the representation of all that is familiar and routine... the traditions, the family, the decorations, the stories.
I find myself listening to, craving Christmas music, wishing for the bitter cold and an occasion for hot chocolate, watching every Christmas movie I can get my hands on.
I am not sure why I feel like I need this so much.
It could be homesickness. It could be the body and the mind hitting a cultural wall.
Maybe it is a combination of the two.
Or maybe, just maybe, my heart longs for something deeper. Because I know that there should be something deeper... Christmas is a time meant for something deeper. It is a time to remember magic. It is a time to remember there is a deeper beauty in this world than I could ever imagine... a deeper beauty that my soul is desperate to grasp.
It reminds me of the longing, the ache of the world before the first Christmas. Four hundred years of silence before He spoke again. A people living in oppression. A world in darkness.
And then, the longing fulfilled with the entrance of a child to peasants, welcomed by the lowly and wrapped in rags.
In one entrance, the darkness was lifted and "a people walking in darkness have seen a great light".
In the past, there are different aspects of the Christmas story I focus on... the light of the Savior in a world of night, the story of a young girl who said yes even if she may not have understood.
Maybe this year, He is reminding me of the longing... what was the world like before the arrival?
This ache, because yes, this life is meant for so much more than what I am settling for... this life finds itself in the story of a God who became a child, grew into a man, and through death from redemption for one such as me.
This heart was meant to bend at the edge of the lowly stable, to rejoice in the glory of what began that night.
And I realize that so often I choose to live like a manger never happened and the silence is still ongoing.
Because yes, there is pain and despair in this world, but there is hope. And Christmas was meant to remind me that no matter how great the darkness, there is always hope because there is a God who whose to wrap my injured flesh around himself, breathe this air, and walk this ground.
I feel it as my heart learns to take the unfamiliar and draw it close... to find my new normal... to rejoice in my adopted family, realizing that I have been blessed with a heart attached to more than one place.
There will always be an ache as long as the heart must wait... because this wait is just a shadow of the ache all creation still awaits for the ultimate grand entrance that is still to come.
So I wait. I live, knowing the joy that has come, the joy of the present, the joy still to come.
But the longing will be fulfilled because the fulfillment has come.
And for this, even an aching heart can rejoice.
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