Hey there! I hope y’all had an amazing Thanksgiving! Now we are in Advent season and preparing for Christmas!!
On that note, I posted a new podcast today. It’s my chat with Regina Sather. Regina is the creator of “The Widowed Mama’s Holiday Survival Kit”, an online course to help widows survive the holiday season. She is a widow and has walked through grief and healing and rebuilding after losing her husband from injuries sustained in Iraq. She is a coach, consultant and online teacher with a heart for serving, “the single, divorced, and widowed mama”. If you are a widow, or know someone who is, please share this episode with them! Registration for Regina’s online course is open now. Here is the link to register: The Widowed Mama’s Holiday Survival Kit.
I’m so grateful to Regina for saying “YES!” and sharing her story with us!
You can find Regina on Instagram at @reginaquestions
It’s not too late to join us over on TEAM YES on facebook if you want to read the book of Luke with us for Advent. Click here to join the group! We are reading a chapter a night and we are on Chapter 2 today. From Chapter 1, we are celebrating Elizabeth and Mary and their “Great Big YESSES!” to God! I love this poem about Mary’s YES, Denise Levertov’s “Annunciation”.
“We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage.
The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent.
God waited.
She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.
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Aren’t there annunciationsof one sort or anotherin most lives?
Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.
More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them.But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
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She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child–but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph.Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’ and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply, the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power–in narrow flesh, the sum of light.
Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love–
but who was God.
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
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She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.”
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And this…the painting I picture when I think of Mary. A painting I first saw many years ago and it has stuck with me. Praying in gratitude for Mary and her Great Big YES. Take a moment to read Luke chapter 1 today. It’s amazing and star studded, filled with the names we know from Sunday school and Bible study. And yet, it feels for me, brand new. It’s an invitation. God is inviting us to enter in. To come and see, hear, feel, experience the living God in a new way. How do you see this amazing story of Jesus now, as an adult? What new thing is God revealing to you?
As we take time to savor this season, we might start feeling a little overwhelmed. Remember, overwhelm is a choice. You can be intentional and choose peace and joy and calm. Some tips: Stay hydrated, eat good foods, work out, talk to friends, make sure to laugh every day, say no every once in awhile, carve out quiet time for yourself, remember that the best present is presence. 🙂