Posted by Nicole on December 23, 2013
Advent. We wait. We wait for God to come down here and be with us. Just hurry up and be with us.
Yesterday, I felt it, that dull discomfort of waiting for things to be RIGHT – To feel God with me and to feel Him making all things comes together for Good. I wanted it, bad.
This incredible waiting that is called LIFE drives some of us mad. We get short burst of fun, joy, beauty, and meaning and then we wait again. This incredible waiting, like watching intermittent shooting stars when what we really need is dawn.
We wait for heaven and the Light of the World to come. Heaven will not just be for our souls. Heaven involves our bodies too. This is the gift of making love.
God, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven – not just in our hearts but in our bodies too.
In honor of Advent and Love and Making It coming together this week, today we have the gift of reading a personal essay from a woman who has never been kissed and is beginning to let herself feel the desire and hope of what will come someday. May all our waiting and longing be this vulnerable and brave.
-Nicole
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I dreamed a few months ago that I had my first kiss.
Yes, I’m 25 and I’ve never been kissed – or even been on an official date. I was a little too “mature” (and obnoxious) in high school to stoop to “chasing boys,” and I was a little too driven in college to take time out for life. Which is strange, really. I’ve always wanted the support of a relationship and the chance to build a life with another person and love them unconditionally. I want the deep friendship of shared experience and ideas and the knowing of each other that comes from that. I want to explore the world of sensuality and romance in a healthy way, which I haven’t always. Other things have just gotten in the way.
It doesn’t take a significant other to experience growth, of course. Sometimes that can even inhibit it. I’ve grown more in these last two years at home dealing with chronic fatigue than I think I have my whole life. I’m learning to make space for myself, and that I have a right to take up room in the world. I’m learning to let go of other peoples’ burdens and pick up my own oxygen mask first in a crisis. I’m learning to lean in, to stand my ground, to experience life ready to fall and fail and make mistakes and then get right back up again.
I think it’s appropriate that my dream took place at some kind of fancy dinner. I’ve discovered a deep love for food and cooking since I’ve been home. I even remember what I was eating in the dream – it was some kind of deconstructed gourmet s’more with a white chocolate mousse and graham cracker crumbles served in a martini glass. Which actually sounds delicious.
It’s also appropriate that in my dream, I spilled some on my shirt. I’m kind of a messy person, a fact I’ve hated my whole life. I bump into things and fall up the stairs. I spill things all the time and have never managed to keep my room clean. I have big curly hair that goes frizzy in the rain. As much as I’ve always wanted to be sleek and svelte, I’m learning that I’m really a flannel pajamas and fuzzy socks kind of girl. And that I’m beautiful, curly hair and all.
So, laughingly, I tried to wipe the spill off my shirt, standing by the table. My date laughed too, kindly. He put water on a napkin and helped me clean up the mess.
We were standing close then, of course, and when I noticed I felt the urge to back away. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I had heard what happens when people stand too close. Because it’s the reflex I’d developed overseas to protect myself and maintain purity and propriety. Because I wouldn’t want to send mixed signals or be rejected or make someone else uncomfortable go too far or do any of the dozen other things I’ve been warned about. There are no guarantees when you let people get too close.
But this time, I stood my ground instead. I chose to take up my own space and let someone else move out of the way, for a change, if this wasn’t what they wanted.
I looked up at him – he was definitely taller than me – and closed my eyes.
He leaned down and we kissed. My heart beat fast.
Then he put his arm around me and walked with me to a quiet corner, a bench where we could sit together and just be.
There was no rejection, only welcome. Only peace. Only the comfort of knowing I was home.
I don’t expect my real first kiss to be quite this revelatory, necessarily. But now, I think I’m finally ready to find out.
Ellie Ava: I’m a storyteller, an explorer, and an avid fan of all things science… especially when it’s fiction. After many years of exploring new cultures and perspectives in Europe, I’m back in the USA taking time to discover the things bubbling up in my own heart and mind. I blog about life at ellieava.tumblr.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: advent, Christmas, God, Heaven, jesus, kiss, love and making it, waiting | 5 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 18, 2013
One week til Christmas. One week til we celebrate God being with us.
For some people, their lives are so full of family and friends, hot chocolate and Christmas Lights, that the darkness is just a shadow in the corner or a fading streetlight down the road. For others, this is a time where the darkness threatens to swallow them whole.
Light flaunts its warm power in the life of one and barely flicks the skin of another covered instead in cold, dark loneliness.
Advent is the waiting. The waiting 100s of years for God to come and make things right. Waiting generations for triumph and light and love to flood the world. Waiting for God to be with us – really with us. We need God with us. God, who says He is Light and Love, and yet seems to leave us lonely and scared in dark places.
God, are you avoiding me?
Where are you when I need you? Psalm 10:1-2
Advent is the waiting. We have no choice. Reminded of our powerlessness against the speed of time, we wait. We cannot save ourselves or our friends from the pain of waiting on God to BE WITH US.
With Christmas comes the promise of a future where we are whole and full. Christmas is the promise that while the pain is still here, God is doing a new thing. He came down to sit in the dark with us.
And this is what He also asked us to do for each other too. While we wait, we wait together. I will wait with you.
The light breaks through dark’s hard shell at the exact points we meet each other. At the loving touch of a friend, a spark ignites.
The spark that says we are going to make it.
Every day this week, I will be posting a story or an essay on advent and waiting and God with us.
Today’s first story is written by Melissa Hawks. A friend I met through adventure and spontaneity. She knows how to tell a story and she knows how to find God in the dark.
This is a story of sitting in the dark and waiting together – seeing the sparks of God’s great love in our small acts of faith.
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Hookers, Heathens, and Me by Melissa Hawks
I left early that dark morning, stopping to get gas on my way. It was freezing and rainy as I stood next to the gas pump, tears threatening to spill over and mix with the drizzle. Standing on tiptoe to keep my too long yoga pants from soaking in the puddles, I was so lost in my own painful thoughts I almost didn’t hear her.
I was jerked from my inner turmoil when an “Excuse me,” escaped her chattering teeth. She was beautiful and had a black eye. A leopard print chiffon shirt bared her stomach, a tiny skirt, and platform heels to rival the ones I tend to wear covered the rest of her. Her blonde fro curled wildly in all directions and her eye make-up was smeared from tears she had cried. At the moment, mine was a mirror image.
“Can I pay you $10 to give me a ride to my car in the parking garage over there? I just got beat up really bad by the last guy I was with. I don’t mind riding in the backseat.” The pain in her eyes.
“Get in the car, girl, and don’t worry about paying me. A girl’s got to help a girl out.” I didn’t really put any thought into it. She was shivering and in pain. “Of course, I’ll drive you. And no, you’re not sitting in the backseat. Get up here in front.” I tossed my bags in the backseat and made room for her.
She climbed up into my Jeep and began to cry. “This man. He just started slamming my head into the TV. Why am I still here? Why am I still doing this? I need to go home. Back to San Jose.”
I was empty. Beyond empty. I was at the bottom of the pit called empty, broken open. All I could offer was this “Our choices, baby, we make them all by ourselves and we have to remember we are in control of our destiny. We have to choose better.”
Sitting in my car with a prostitute/hooker/call girl who had just been beaten up by a john, I’ve never felt more broken. There were no words to her about God. There was just an understanding about her brokenness because I was experiencing it myself.
I think that’s what love does in the face of broken. It doesn’t look away. It holds the face of pain in its hands and says “you’re not too much for me.”
She must have seen that deep pain in me too, because right before climbing out of the car she leaned over. In a cloud of perfume she hugged me and kissed my cheek. “We’re gonna make it, girl. We’re gonna be okay,” she whispered in my ear.
Some days we can only make one good choice in the midst of a dozen awful ones. Some days we can’t rescue someone else. Some days we can not even rescue ourselves. Instead redemption comes from the most unlikely of sources.
No promises that we’ll be unscathed or that we’ll come out whole on the other side. No false illusion covering the a fact that it’s a brutal and ugly process. Not even a pledge of some small beauty that awaits at the end. Only one simple truth.
“We’re gonna make it.”
God speaks to me through hookers and heathens. Maybe because I am one.
****
Melissa Hawks is a curator of brand and story at Hawks & Rock. She is discovering what it means to write her own story and how God lives in the detours.For her personal brand of awkward, space geekyness, and inspiration follow her @melissahawks account Branding wisdom can be found at her company’s twitter @hawksandrock and the Hawks & Rock website and blog can be found at hawksandrock.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, How Can I Help | Tagged: advent, Christmas, community, darkness, faith, God, jesus, light, Love | 7 Comments »