by Christie Purifoy | Dec 28, 2012 | Community, Family, God's Love, Grateful, Home, Pennsylvania, Uncategorized
Their minivan is stuffed with children and luggage, all the paraphernalia of a Christmas well celebrated. The late December sun is too weak to soften the wind’s bite so we rush inside to wave goodbye from the window.
The kids and I wave frantically, and it is as if we are saying goodbye to good friends, to Christmas, to this entire year.
In a few more days I will look ahead, but now is the time for saying goodbye. For looking back. For remembering.
In one year everything has changed.
One year ago, I had three children and little hope of more.
One year ago, I lived in the south and grieved the loss of northern winters.
One year ago, I dreamed of a farmhouse with room for chickens and vegetables while my single, potted tomato withered in the Florida sun.
On year ago, we spent the holidays alone and wondered if we’d ever again spread a feast across the length of our dining table for a crowd of friends and family.
This year is dying, but it has left me with these gifts: four children, an old farmhouse, a large garden, and the perfect spot for a chicken coop.
And this: hospitality, community. We now live within driving distance of our dearest friends. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear from someone we love: “We’ll be in Pennsylvania. Can we come and see you?”
I live in a Victorian farmhouse with several acres of land, but the fields all around have been parceled into home sites. Now that the leaves have fallen I can look out of my windows and see houses. I don’t yet know who lives in them, but one day I will. One day, their children will run up the hill and through the break in the fence to play with mine. One day, I will wave hello through the line of trees with an invitation to help pick blueberries. Or apples. Or tomatoes.
One day, one day, one day …
This is the greatest gift of this year: I have been brought to a place with a future.
In other words, I have been given a home.
“I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.”
Jeremiah 32: 40-41
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 20, 2012 | Advent, Faith, God's Love, guest post, motherhood, Uncategorized
Today, Amy Lepine Peterson returns the favor and shares these powerful reflections with us. There is so much wisdom here, I’m taking my time, reading and rereading. These are words I know I need right now.
Thank you, Amy.
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Advent is a season of darkness, of waiting for the light; but I’m warier of darkness than I used to be.
When I was a teenager, I revelled in darkness. I don’t mean that I loved bad things. I loved complicated things, facing the realities of our broken world, anything that seemed deeper and truer than the sparkly cliches I found on tv and in commercial christian products. My teens were when I read Thomas Hardy and Pascal and Kierkegaard, when intellectual doubts were hitting me for the first time, when I first traveled to a third world country and recognized the excess of my own lifestyle. I was in my teens when Dad took me to see Good Will Hunting – despite the language – because of the redemptive themes, and I too wanted to recognize truth like a troubled genius or a holy rebel. I needed a faith that was honest about darkness.
Becoming a mother was what changed me. I first noticed it when I was pregnant with Rosemary. Jack and I started to watch The Road one night- a film based on Cormac McCarthy’s post- apocalyptic vision of a father and son traveling across a barren earth. Though the movie had been hailed as important, haunting, and powerful, and though its bleak, true-eyed vision was something I would have loved in my late teens, I couldn’t make it through even the first half of the film. As a parent, it was too harrowing to watch, and I wanted to sleep instead.
Once your own children enter the picture, the reality of darkness in the world easily becomes overwhelming, your potential for distress growing exponentially with each child you bear.
To be honest, I don’t want to talk here about what happened in Connecticut last week. I can hardly bear to acknowledge that it exists or to read the names of the children who died. I haven’t read a single news story about it all the way through, and I haven’t watched even one news clip, not just because I’m generally suspicious of the reliability and motives of the press, but also because I can’t manage, emotionally, to let myself imagine how those parents feel.
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Tonight before bed, I read to my almost-4-year-old from the Jesus Storybook Bible. We read this, based on Acts 1:
Jesus’ friends and helpers huddled together in a stuffy upstairs room. Even though it was sunny outside, the shutters were closed. The door was locked.
“Wait in Jerusalem,” Jesus had told them, “I am going to send you a special present. God’s power is going to come into you. God’s Holy Spirit is coming.”
So here they were. Waiting. Actually, mostly what they were doing was just being scared and hiding. (You can’t blame them — their best friend had left; the Important People and Leaders were after them; and Jesus had given them a job they didn’t know how to do.)
As they waited, they were praying and remembering — remembering how, from the beginning, God had been working out his Secret Rescue Plan.
I wondered as I read: how much of what I do is just “being scared and hiding,” waiting, in this long Advent season, for the Secret Rescue Plan to be completed, hoping I make it through unscathed? Although for me, unlike for the disciples, the Holy Spirit has already come, already made my heart burn within me, I still cower in fear when faced with the realities of a world in need of resurrection. I know about this Secret Rescue Plan, and I’ve been assured of its success. The Prince of Darkness grim? – one little word shall fell him. I ought not to tremble.
And yet my fear is legitimate; after last week, there’s no denying that even our safest places are vulnerable, that the “control” I think I have over my life is illusory.
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So how do I, with my tender mother-heart, open up again to face the realities of a complex world, where the End is certain, but in the meantime, the ways can be inscrutable? How can I embrace the spirit of love, rather than the spirit of fear? How can I trust God enough to face the suffering of the world – and the potential of suffering for my own little ones – with clear eyes and an open heart?
I know that I need to face the darkness head on and ready to fight. Taking comfort in shiny happy cliches and ignoring reality may feel good for a season, but ultimately helps no one, ultimately turns me into one of the shallow “phonies” that Holden Caufield and I used to despise.
Leaning into the meaning of Advent means remembering that our hearts have to be split in order to open wider. And leaning into the meaning of Advent means believing that because a baby was born, there is a promise that if we lean into the suffering of the world instead of protecting against it, we find love. This is a long wait, but we’re not waiting alone.
I don’t have to watch The Road. But I think I do have to watch Half the Sky. I have to begin by being willing to see the brokenness of the world, and then I have to be ready to fight against the darkness. I have to combat the urge to construct a “safe” life. I have to be willing to acknowledge the brokenness of the world, not just intellectually, but emotionally, if I’m going to be able to help usher a new and better kingdom in.
We wait, this long Advent, for that kingdom to arrive, but we must wait with honest eyes and willing hands, practicing resurrection in the dark.
Amy Lepine Peterson teaches ESL Writing and American Pop Culture at Taylor University, and spends most of her time making a home for her best-friend-husband and their two (frankly adorable) children. You can find her in the cornfields of Indiana, or online at Making All Things New.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 8, 2012 | Advent, Family, Music, Uncategorized
O Come O Come Emmanuel
O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
In ancient times did’st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 5, 2012 | Advent, Family, motherhood, Uncategorized, Waiting
We gathered around our advent wreath Sunday night.
The boys were too loud, and the baby needed to be fed halfway through, the three-year-old whined because we wouldn’t light all four candles, and then, of course, everyone fought over who would get to blow the candle out. But, the dining-room lights were low, and it was sort of beautiful, too.
We avoided wordy explanation and long prayers and passed out bread and grape juice instead (gluten-free for the big boy). My bread was a little stale, but, like I said, the lights were low, and it was all sort of beautiful.
If Advent is supposed to be a kind of journey, I wonder where we’ll be in a few more weeks. Will anything be different? Will I be any different?
It’s hard to imagine because my hormones are in new-baby upheaval and the boys I love so much are much too loud so I’m always yelling when I mean to be loving and the only change I can imagine is this:
We will sit together by the light of four candles instead of one.
The room we share will be just a little brighter.
My family may look its best in low light, but I still think this is what I want – this is the change I most desire.
A little more light to see by.
And the grace to love what it reveals.
What does Advent look like to you? Click here for the Advent flickr group hosted by our own photographer, Kelli Campbell.
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by Christie Purifoy | Oct 19, 2012 | Family, God's Love, Grateful, Home, motherhood, Pennsylvania, Poetry, Seasons, Uncategorized
A few mornings ago, I heard an interview on NPR with the poet Mary Oliver. Speaking of the experiences which inspire her poetry, she said, “The world doesn’t have to be beautiful to work. But it is beautiful. Why?”
Some questions don’t need to be answered in order to open our eyes. There is wisdom to be had just in the asking.
We tend to think of the world’s pain as the senseless thing. The meaningless thing. But what of the world’s beauty? Whatever did we do to deserve autumn leaves? The smell of a campfire? The honey-wine taste of a pear?
This is the view from my window. With apologies to The Photographer (who I’m sure can look at this shot and know exactly how I should have tuned my camera settings), it’s a view to make you catch your breath.
Sitting in the chair by this window, I notice just how tired I am. And I can hear the boys fighting on the other side of the house. And then the baby starts to cry, and it’s time (again!) to fiddle with formula and plastic feeder bits and bobs because my body is fundamentally broken.
But, all I can think is “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
My bed faces a set of three windows. The glass is so old it’s wavy, and the autumn colors outside look like they’ve been spun through a kaleidoscope. Sitting there, I can still hear those boys fighting, and I can see the fearsome dust bunnies lurking in every corner of this room, and, oh, I am so, so tired.
But, again, all I can think is “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Following a season of drought, my life today is one of excess. I am too tired. I am too happy. I am so disappointed. Those boys are too loud and will they ever learn to play without fighting??
But, it’s the beauty I can’t get over. The over-the-top, cup-runneth-over beauty that is everywhere in my life right now.
So, yes, I am tired and my house is dirty and I wish I had the time and energy to cook all those mouth-watering recipes I just pinned on pinterest, but I open my eyes just the tiniest bit, and the only words I can think of are these:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
