Still, I believe in the hope

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” ― Anne Lamott

I've been thinking about this all week: about hope, and about darkness, and about the strange juxtaposition of the two that I cling to every Advent. I would say particularly this year, but the truth is that every December is dark, and this is something I wrestle with each year. I'm not sure that's much of a comfort, though.

Still, I believe in the hope, in the dawn, in the light, despite everything. It is literally the only way I can live.

Six years ago today, my three-and-a-half year old daughter was supposed to appear in her very first Christmas program. As luck would have it, she spent the entire weekend miserable with a fever, cough, and runny nose, so we hunkered down in our pajamas instead of watching our baby girl in church. Reading over my journal (one written in a fog of late pregnancy, but one I am still so glad I have) I remember that in the midst of our excitement and anticipation for our new little one, I also felt quiet and a little lonely. I had already stopped teaching for the year, finding it impossible to put on my socks by myself, much less manage classes full of teenagers. I didn't see anyone during the day, which is perhaps one reason I loved my visits to my midwife so much--just to connect with another human for awhile, to feel her loving hands on me, to listen to her soothing, authoritative voice.

I spent those last days mostly on the couch, trying to read, trying to write. "Mostly," I wrote, "I'm just waiting."

My son was born on a dark and cold December morning six years ago tomorrow. My water broke shortly after I went to bed on Sunday night. I sang my way to the birth center at two o'clock in the morning, sitting on a folded towel. I alternated between "Float On" by Modest Mouse and "Revelation Song" by Phillips, Craig, & Dean. Both seemed appropriate.

I've told his birth story before, even here. I never grow tired of remembering it, but tonight, on the eve of his sixth birthday, the part I want to remember the most is the rush of pure joy as he was born into his father's hands, and the way I laughed when he was delivered to my chest.

(Is it strange that I can't type that without crying?)

In Hebrew the name Isaac means He laughs. Laughter. On that dark December morning when ice coated the driveway of my midwife's house at the edge of Lake Tapps, my son was born into our family and I laughed. I laughed and I fell in love and that joy carried us home a few hours later, followed us into our own cozy little house where we introduced our baby to his big sister, who was eating waffles with her auntie.

Tomorrow morning, that boy turns six years old, and he is still our light, our joy, our laughter. Even though his birthday falls during the darkest part of the year and I will never be able to completely untangle it from the dark events that surround it, maybe that is the point. Sometimes despair just envelops me these days. I wonder if I'll ever again celebrate his birthday without feeling helpless rage over the Sandy Hook massacre, for instance, which happened the day he turned three. Tomorrow he will be the same age as those children who were executed in their classroom, and I struggle mightily with the fact that my children live in a world where this is a real fear of mine. I have a plenty of irrational fears and I will own those, but this one has struck close to home and I know it will continue to strike. I struggle mightily with raising children to be compassionate allies when it would be so easy to raise them to be a part of the status quo that will continue to serve them at the cost of our humanity. I struggle with feeling completely and utterly inadequate for the job. But my struggles are nothing compared to the struggles of those who have lost their children, their safety, their homes, their dignity, their faith. And the fact that this life is a struggle doesn't give me permission to check out or to build a wall around what I have and hold dear; it calls me to show up and roll up my sleeves and work and, yes, wait, which has never been a particular strength of mine. I'm still figuring out what, exactly, that means.

Today, on his last day of being five years old, my joyful son took on his first speaking role in a Christmas program and he was objectively, totally fabulous--both of my children were--and my heart burst in all the predictable ways. Sometimes I think the entire point of me writing anything ever is just to try to keep and hold these beautiful moments for myself because they pass, and they fade. So quickly. But I also think that maybe this is my own small way of lighting the darkness. To remind myself that darkness will fall, again and again, and sometimes I will just have to sit down in it, but I cannot and will not stay there.