The Peace We Long For: Advent in Disorienting Times | Day 20

So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

Galatians 4:7

I work hard to cultivate whimsy.

But Jason knows the truth. The real of it is I’m the typest A this side of the nuthouse.

I dream of matching toned wrapping papers. No cool whites mixed with warm creams. I need a feeling when I walk into my living room. A certain kind of feeling that only matching-toned wrapping papers can provide. And every year, I go after those Christmas clearance racks like a bandit with visions of sugar plums and the woman across the room in my head. Once and for all, she’ll be me (a budgeted version, of course).

I’m exaggerating- and yet, this reaching. This doing. Maybe it’s because I grew up poor. And now I’m not. Rich or poor, there’s always a kind of shit show going on inside, isn’t there? We’re all laughing away our traumas (why do you think I married the funny one?)

Kate Bowler says there’s no cure for being human. And yet- we damned humans- had to see God in a pig trough that holy night. Why God? Why’d you make me have to look at you there, God?

That heaven on earth is not giving woman across the room vibes, God. My spiritual

practices are S.M.A.R.T.: content to walk every day and content to make my bed every day. Always content to move, always content to match those wrapping papers, as long as it gets me further and further away from that…. Pig trough. Where God is.

I’ve told Jason that poor is a place you don’t ever want to go back. The truth of my story is that God was closest to me when I was my daughter Laurel’s age at 9, crying after finding out we were being evicted…again.

God held my hand there. Some way I can’t ever fully know, he set me free, there.

So maybe this is our cure for being human. Stop going away from the lowly place, whatever that looks like for you. Go there and expect stars to shine and angels to sing over you and your rightful heritage.

PRAYER: God, thank you that I was always your child. And since I am your child, your heir - Galatians 4:7