Stay Hungry. Stay Silent...

Serving the anxious soul during Advent and Christmas

I once had the privilege of caring for a child who battled intense anxiety. The painful tension manifested early in life, caused by an autoimmune inflammatory condition of the brain and triggered by exposure to streptococcus. Anxiety was induced by sound, activity, gatherings, video, audio, bad news, and even happy tidings.

My experience of loving someone with such challenges permanently changed the way I approach other people. I learned (the piercingly hard way) that I frequently misunderstand the true nature of love, wrongly conflating relationship management with agape. I had to be shaken vigorously into awareness and tenderness, thanks be to God. The alternative would have been brutal for everyone involved.

Years went by and this young one blossomed under the care of loving family and good care of the mind, body, and spirit. Anxiety rarely appeared in a disruptive or public way, but eventually did unexpectedly jump the banks during an Advent liturgy. Out of practice with virtue in this arena, I panicked and allowed my pride to lead.

“You’re too big to be doing this. Please uncover your ears…”

We were sitting toward the front of church listening to an Advent homily about hope; and this child, really just too big to publicly cover her ears and hide in my lap, was doing just that.

What will people think? Isn’t that always the little bothersome bug in the ear of a pride-filled mother at church? Anyway, my hands reached for hers and I pulled at her hands, trying to pry them from the sides of her head. They wouldn’t budge. In fact, a herd of elephants could not have moved them without breaking her. My most gentle encouragements failed as I felt her body stiffen beneath my hands. I’d missed the moment when I could have helped because I was busy with my ego.

I’ve made it worse. God forgive me… and I let my hands fall.

I recalled the hours I’d spent in life holding my own hands gently over her little ears. Softening the world. Letting her rock it all away when no one else understood, as her arms shook with the intensity of the search for silence. I’d wait and whisper until I felt softness returning and sometimes I would cry into her hair as she melted into sleep. She’d been okay for so long—years of managing—and I’d forgotten, though I would have sworn at the time that I’d never forget.

Over the coming weeks, we talked it over and worked together. She explained that Father’s homilies scared her. That the Scriptures scared her, too, with all the talk of suffering, death, wars, and evil. She understood, to a degree, the talk about redemption. She had a real sense of the joy which comes to a soul that is close to Christ. That was her experience within relationship, but the knowledge never seemed to come without the requisite accounts of the abject misery of Salvation History and the brokenness of God’s people.

“Why,” she asked, “can’t it just be Christmas? If it could only just be Christmas now. I’m never scared on Christmas.”

Oh, child of light… how your innocence pulls the curtain away from the adults in your life, exposing timid souls who spend a lifetime of holidays seeking glitter-flecked escape from the hardness of life. And here Advent announces itself again, stepping into the middle of the darkness with a great promise of hope. Almost everyone (even the irreligious) agree to get on board. A cashier at a local store expressed our collective thirsting for respite:

“Boy, do I NEED Christmas this year.”

Yeah, you, me, and every kid burdened too young by the weight of an unredeemed world. Lured by the promise of distraction, the “magic of the season,” and Hallmark movies that act like an NSAID on the pain of the soul, we fall for it every time. Christians look at it multidimensionally, of course. We know the promises of light in the darkness but we take the bait of the tinsel, too. I suspect that we suffer even more deeply because we know the whole story so well… and we know the dissatisfaction of skipping pages which the Author intended us to keep in order.

Like the kiddo who hears the whole reality of the Gospel and covers her ears, we become uneasy when life isn’t matching up for us. If we could only fast forward to Christmas! We figure we’d better make it happen and pour ourselves into doing everything except sitting in silence with the hardest questions and the terror of reality.

We trim the tree, eat the cookies, and make sure the world knows that Jesus is the reason for the season! All a healthy part of celebration when in the right order. Then…

The curtain falls on the end of the holidays, we sigh with bellies deep against our belts (a little snugger than before)… and sink a little lower into the hard awareness that staving off the reality of our circumstances for a month does not eradicate suffering… and that maybe we are still just as miserable as ever we were.

For the record, I’m not generally miserable, and yet we all live in what Father Alfred Delp, from the bowels of a Nazi prison, called our “Monastery of the Hard Life.” Our hardships come by turn and every one of us must navigate the crushing blows that mortality brings. Father experienced his greatest trial (and freedom) with his hands in irons. Though perhaps different by degree, his longing had a similar quality to mine and to yours. He wrote:

Freedom is the breath of life. We sit in musty bomb cellars and cramped prisons and groan under the bursting and destructive blows of fate. We should finally stop giving everything a false glamour and unrealistic value and begin to bear it for what it is—unredeemed life. As soon as we do this, the jangling of chains and the trembling of nerves and the faintness of heart transform themselves into a litany: “Rorate caeli… [Drop down, dew…].”

…Then the narrowness widens, our lungs breath in fresh air again, and the horizon has promises again. Existence still weeps and mourns, but already a soft, joyous melody of longing and knowledge is ringing through the broken voices of the mourners.

How does one communicate these consolations to a fearful child? And how much more difficult to explain them to an adult who no longer has an innocent hope that there can be Christmas without bitter dregs? How do we reach through the barriers of addiction, coldness, sickness, grief, gripping fear, and medicated blockages against Love itself… to make reality whole again?

It is easy to say “I am suffering.” Not so easy to turn the page to see the rest of the story that Hope waits to remove the chains which have grown into our skin like the scales of a Narnian dragon.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour: and let justice spring up together:
I the Lord have created him. Isaiah 45:8

Reviving Advent…

Contemplation isn’t optional for a redeemed life. It is only in that quiet space of prayer that we have the courage to allow God to walk us through the prisons, deserts, violence, and relentless fatigue of life so that we can rise up with prophetic voice and indefatigable testimony of gratitude and praise.

Joy is not an emotion any more than love is. As Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote in The Art of Living, “Love is not concerned with a person’s accomplishments, it is a response to a person’s being.” And so it is with true joy, which does not live in the emotion of the sparkling Christmas tree and does not die with grief… but lives in response to the indwelling of a Person. Wonderful. Counselor. Prince of Peace.

It is necessary to restore silence in order to heal the order of joy and to dispel anxiety, to find a quiet space away from the noise to recollect and allow God to lay claim, to let Him cover our ears—so gently—until anxiety gives way to surrender. What else can be done for the anxious person whose heart is so achingly full of longing for God and so disabled by anxiety?

I once had a dream that Blessed Mother was holding me and that her tears were falling into my hair. The tears held her sorrow and an inseparable joy. So…

Let it rain.

Pour down on us, Mother Mary, those tears which restore courage to our hearts and render us capable of surrendering to the power of the Incarnation. Let it not be said that tinsel or fear held us back from the perfect gift of the perfect Father. And let us be a gift in the world…

Holding ears, softening life for others, modeling joyful courage, and inviting into a rhythmic healing pattern of gratitude and praise.

We are still in the silence of Advent. Whatever that thing is that you haven’t yet surrendered… it’s time. Go to a place of silence and ask Him to help you do it. I will pray for you. Please pray for me.

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Joy Nudging…

Earlier this Advent, I had the privilege of chatting with Brooke Taylor about the glory and challenge of Advent in her podcast episode called Eustace Scrubb, the Occult and Advent. I shared my experience with getting caught up in the occult and how I finally broke free… and some other things. Those of you who are C.S. Lewis devotees might already have some sense of how Eustace and Advent could possibly go together…

TBTS #247: Eustace Scrubb, the Occult and Advent

And if you ever catch yourself comparing the work of the Divine Physician in your life to Aslan mercifully ripping through Eustace’s dragon skin, you might enjoy this wonderful indie song I recently found. I had no idea until this morning that someone had written an entire album using The Chronicles of Narnia as inspiration! The work of Sarah Sparks has been an early Christmas surprise for me… reviving my Advent courage and giving a little nudge to a sluggish joy.

Eustace Scrubb by Sarah Sparks

Eustace Scrub

For the first in my life
I’m not living a lie
And I hate who I am
I’ve become what I feared
And I cried dragon tears
Just to prove I’m a man

I tried to change my appearance but I am not changed
I’m just tired
I tried to heal myself long before I met your gaze
At the water
I’m at your feet
Would you tear into the deep of my heart
To heal me?

I’ve seen my own reflection
I know the pain I’m in
I’ve been a lonely wretch and
I can’t get out of it

As he looked through my eyes
At the things I despised
I felt pierced by his gaze
But he pealed off my skin
And he then threw me into
The water to save me

I wore this bracelet, bright and golden
That overnight became a chain
I was a lonely, wretched soul that
Lost in the dark cried out your Name
You cut me deep, I know I felt it
But it’s the sweetest kind of pain
Oh sweet relief, You took my burdens
Oh I believe Oh I believe

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May the remainder of your Advent be a shower of grace from the inexhaustible ocean of God’s mercy. If you feel empty, rejoice that you will enter Christmas HUNGRY for wholeness in Jesus Christ. He is coming.

May the peace of Christ be with you now and forever.

Melody

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