"How Is Your Heart?" this Advent Season

“I trust your finger has continued to heal,” he opened with. “How is your heart?”

It’s so easy to ask and answer about the physical—even when the physical is not good. Why is it so hard to ask and answer about the heart?

But when asked, directly, gently, authentically like that—it stopped me in my tracks. This was not a question meant to incite the polite, passing closure of a “Fine. And you?”

I was, naturally, busy. Busy with the things of the day that happen everywhere—food and dishes and Christmas tree decorating. Pet care, paying bills, shopping, answering texts and phone messages, encouraging a stressed college student facing exams, an overwhelmed high schooler doing the same PLUS trying to figure out her future college choices, an angsty, cranky young teen whose middle school social life is less than satisfying and whose family members’ choices couldn’t possibly seem rational to her, and a spunky, idealistic, energetic elementary schooler who just really wants to soak up all the last moments of her rapidly fleeting childhood.

“How IS my heart?” I stopped to ask myself.

I told him I wasn’t sure. I told him I wanted to answer him, because it’s so rare we get to the real HEART of the matter anyway, and I didn’t miss the significance of having a friend—even one so far away—who truly cared to know.

I don’t think I quite got to plumb the depths but I ventured out to give him snippets, in writing, across a thousand or more miles. Slowly externally processing. Poking around in that strong muscle with all its hidden bruises, scars, wounds, and yet still—functioning sinews and chambers. This hurts. This helps numb it. Evasion. A little anger. Desire for finding some good to embrace in the mundane. Pain of loss. Pain for others whose loss seems too great to bear. But doing the next thing. Thankful for that. And he understands. God, has he been there. Still is there. I ask after him. I tell him, from my far-distant perch, that I observe a movement between grief, playful mischief, and “both usages of ‘hosanna’—praise mingled with crying out for aid.” He calls it a pretty accurate perception.

It’s really not a bad place to be—given the place we live in. The place where any one viewpoint lends glory and joy and wonder and awe and delight. But turn a few degrees and there’s shock and horror and blindsiding injury. Joy and sorrow. Beauty and gore.

But God, isn’t this Advent? Isn’t this IT?

I said to myself and to others as far back as October that I really wanted to FEEL Advent this year. I started thinking about things to do to make that happen. What should I read? Should I make my own Advent card deck? Buy a calendar? A devotional? Force myself to do crafts with the kids?

I asked my Anglican priest friend. He had some Lent suggestions before. He gave a few worthwhile suggestions. I talked to a young woman in the office, who listened and nodded a lot and pondered with me. I wrote it in a journal, a handwritten prayer: Give me Advent, please, Jesus. I need to FEEL your coming.

And where did I feel it?

My youngest and I had just finished decorating the Christmas tree last night—an event she threw herself into with great vigor and determination, and I went into with some reluctance because of the mess it always leaves for me to clean up. But I loved watching her, on her tiptoes on the stepstool stringing up the lights, and surveying the entire work as it evolved under her careful placement of globe and toy and icicle. Making beauty. Banishing the dark spots one by one till nothing but glorious sparkle remained.

The tree gave me some pleasure, indeed. The child gave me more. But was it Advent? For all that brilliantly baubled and bangled spectacle represents, and which I know, in my head, it still didn’t penetrate. Until the question: “How’s your heart?”

My heart HURTS. It hurts because there is too much pain for too long and too many questions unanswered and too many young people lost this year and too much aloneness and distance and failure. I want so badly to gather my chicks under my wings—not just the ones that I gave birth to but ALL of those I love, younger, older, in between—and feel safety, security, comfort, belonging. I want someone to wrap those kinds of wings around me, while I have mine around them, and another layer on top of that one, and another, and another, until we are one indivisibly knit community of inseparable safety, solace, and inclusion. That would give hope. 

I had to begin to peel the layers off my heart to find what it was I needed most, layered back onto it. And that’s where I felt it: Advent.

He comes to do that. To peel hearts and to clothe again. He comes to make HIS blessings known, far as the curse is found. Have we not found the curse all around us by this point in life? This middle is simply mired in the effects of the curse we all know—whether we name it or not. And that is why he wouldn’t—no, couldn’t—stay away. He could not stay away and be who he is: good. In him there is no darkness at all, and so he came into the world, the light of the world, to banish the darkness. And the darkness did not overcome him.

I’ve felt overcome. I think, honestly, that’s part of the result of binding our hearts with busyness and its numbing power. It’s not possible to feel his Advent when you’ve longed for numbness from the other. It goes both ways. Numb me from the pain and you’ll numb me from the ecstasy too. We have to keep peeling. It’s part of staying alive. And I do want to live.

I’m grateful for the friend who helps to peel my heart—though I know, at times, I’ve been its rabid protector. That protectiveness may be necessary for a time, when the wounds are just too deep and raw, but let it be temporary for the greater good of the soul. Stitches dissolve. We knit. We heal—at least enough to feel the pain and see it for what it is: a pointer to the need. The need of his Advent.

So, friend: How is your heart?