there has been so much in these last weeks, and the few times I’ve sat down to write a blog, I have felt too overwhelmed to try and capture much in words.  but I have this morning off, to catch up with friends, to drink coffee at a coffee shop, and to process a bit of life here.

I have been wrestling with the intensity of the environment here, facing poverty and my own selfish desire to be comfortable, reeling with the pain of so much trauma, missing being home for Christmas.

this is a dark place, where hope struggles for breath every day.  life is hard here - poverty constantly tugs at people’s dreams with its incessant reminders of being hungry, speaking hopeless words about what is possible, making survival the highest standard.

I am desperate for Emmanuel, blown away by the truth of Emmanuel…it’s crazy making, even though it’s totally normal, to feel more intensely than I have in all my life God with us, and to be so angrily begging for God to be more with us…I am convinced that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living - I do see it, in their faces.  but only minutes later I walk down the street and feel this incredulous, wordless frustration that there is not more goodness than darkness here right now.

this is the place from which I enter advent…a space of longing and hoping for love, for goodness to be tangible…this is where the need for comfort speaks louder than the promise of joy…for the good news must speak to the needs of this place, and joy can only grow out of the comfort of such suffering. in a new way, it is unbelievable to me that the God of the universe came here…that this God entered this place makes me unspeakably grateful, and desperate beyond words for more, new enterings.  the pain that I feel, the fellowship of suffering I now experience, is not only that I have wrestled against darkness attacking me, but that I am wrestling against the darkness which plagues the ones I love…the agony and the ache of hoping for life to spring up in this place is a kind of suffering that is transforming my understanding of the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection…hope that bleeds for those it loves…

so I drink coffee, and I listen to every Christmas song that promises tidings of comfort and joy…

and I hope.