Before and after...Advent Hope

In my life… in everyone’s life… come moments of before and after. The before moments, the moments when life is normal as you know it, disappear like morning mist evaporating under the warm gaze of the rising sun. One minute it is there, solid ground, and the next minute solid ground is gone, replaced with quicksand. Before Tim died, before Gayle died, before Daddy’s diagnosis, before Michael’s heart stent, before… I experienced a seismic shift in my ground of being once I heard words that could not be taken back.
I do not stand alone as a survivor of before and after. All of us, if we have not yet felt the ground move under our feet, will someday know the feeling of time standing still as our world changes forever. In those moments, what we believe, who we believe in, how we live what we believe, becomes the skeleton for our new life in the land of after. This skeleton will be fleshed out in the blazing light that evaporates the soft, misty edges and reveals what is true, what is necessary, what is real, what is absolutely essential for survival afterward. We are born again and in the birthing, we are stripped naked, forced to change, grow or die for lack of understanding.
My friend Judy Herring said it best when presented with her diagnosis of ALS. “Not why me,” she said, but “Why not me?” None of us are completely protected from struggle, pain and heartbreak. God does not carve out a safe place, a cocoon for those who live for God in this world. Our response to the unbearable, the unthinkable determines who we become as we walk through the valley of the shadow. And there, in that place of choosing, one can find power, strength, hope, grace and joy. One can live in Lamentations or sing a Psalm, see only darkness and loss or search for light and a different life. Quicksand becomes solid rock as life, the precious gift of life, is celebrated in spite of, because of its limits.
Dear friends hit the wall last Friday, the wall that leaves you grief stricken, bewildered, lost and sinking. They are moving on now, making choices, living in their altered world, trying to remain upright as they walk over this stony ground. For them and for all those who walk in Advent darkness, I pray the light touch of hope to come and rest in their souls. I pray the rough places will be made smooth as hope becomes the wind beneath their eagle wings. As they live with uncertainty, I pray for an abiding assurance of new light yet to come, for new life yet to be born, for beginnings in the midst of endings and for the strong, strong Love That Knows No End to surround them. Help me be a part of your Loving Face, O God, for those who need to feel and see you in their time of Advent darkness.