Whoa! What a Year

Thanksgiving to Advent to Christmas and how to deal with the never-ending temptation to know what's next.

Dec 08, 2024

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WHOA! WHAT A YEAR!

When I reflect on this year’s events as Thanksgiving 2024 has just past, I think, woah – what a year. What. A. Year. Actually I can use that phase for the year before that too. It’s been a couple of years of spiritual and literal movement and change for my husband and me. God, bless my husband in this because I’m sure he’s felt like a cowboy unceremoniously dragged by a rope behind a running horse at times. But we’ve survived. If you’ve been reading along the whole DNA story, you’ll understand.

I wonder, are you saying it too? “Whoa, what a year.”

FROM THANKSGIVING TO ADVENT

As we enter into the Advent season, I think upon this journey that won’t end this side of heaven and, for the first time as Christmas approaches, I contemplate Advent with new awareness, new wonder and awe. Advent not being just a three-dimensional chocolate filled daily calendar (though I love them) but the solemn yet joyously filled anticipation of the Light coming into the world.

Then a flip in awareness. Something ponders me. Could this same Light have been anticipating me this time last year? This time last year as I contemplated a DNA test? This Light priming to blow up darkness to which I was, frankly, reconciled: “It is what it is. It’s the facts of my life,” far outside the furthest reaches of my consciousness as a possibility. No thought of it. A Father? Alive? Well, that would take a miracle. A resurrection from the dead.

As it happens, God’s it totally up for that. Resurrection from the dead.

Then, unbeknownst and unannounced, this Light began to dawn around this time last year with the cyber sale of a little DNA test kit. The first anniversary has come and gone last week.

The advent of a new dawn in my life. The renewing and rewriting of a story I thought was over.

I now peer into this pre-Christmas season, the advent of the Light coming into the world, with a more philosophical, a more reflective curiosity, of this Awe and Wonder.

God gave so much to me this year. He also took some things away. And upon this anticipation of Christmas, I see myself in turn presenting his gift back to him - high up to the Light; this gift to me looking astonishingly like a newborn babe, precious and loved. I murmur with delighted reverence, “Look at what you did this year, God.”

Not all years are like that. Maybe you had an explosive year like the one I had. Fireworks. Maybe you’re sitting with your back to a wall in a hallway with doors that won’t open. Maybe you can’t see the doors today. Just a hallway. You’re waiting, praying, contemplating, asking, or banging. Who knows. Maybe your year was somewhere in between the vast chasm of fireworks and sleep.

As we begin Advent my soul is nourished with your kindness to read my stories, your willingness to walk alongside and send your comments, and your financial support. Thank you. (And I hope that didn’t read like a Masterpiece Theatre sponsorship ad after a Downton Abbey episode.)

Thanks for reading Little Yellow Bird! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This year, a piece of writing – a musical of one woman – that I began and composing over ten years ago finally made it to the stage in a miraculous turn of events. The show is called Who’s My Girl? It tracks the roles men, specifically fathers, have played in my life. But unsurprisingly, it never really had a good or gratifying ending, so it lay dormant, filed for many years. Waiting. Baking.

Then 2024 happened. A DNA test. A father… you know the rest.

Suddenly, there’s an ending to the play with a mission - no, a ministry - to perform. Suddenly, worries and fears about “how will I do this” simply fix themselves. Door and windows fly open.

Because it was time. The time was always going to be now. This year. This reason.

I look back at all those years I fretted and struggled about “when will this happen” and I thank God on my knees it didn’t dare happen until now.

Not only was the ending evident – the opportunity to perform the piece arrived in my home town of Fort Worth.

I didn’t see that coming. (I did ask for surprises this year.)

Full circles.

Prayers answered.

THE NEVER-ENDING TEMPTATION TO KNOW WHAT’S NEXT

It is always tempting to pray, “What’s next, Lord?” or “WHAT’S NEXT LORD?????!!!” But I am reminded that my current “What’s now?” is my last year’s “What’s next?”. That is to say, we only ever have today. To continually be asking “What’s next?”, is to disregard how far God has brought you today.

It also bears that considering how far God has brought my husband and me, and where, and how, and with what and whom this year – I need a moment to breathe! You ask me, “What’s next?” Buy me a drink first!

I don’t know what’s next. I know that what’s happening now is for such a time as this. Everything is relatively temporary. So while I’m placing my own hands to the small of my back pushing forward, I will also dig in my heels a little to slow my self-push and remember the Light that shined for me, illuminating the path to right smack here.

Right here. Right now. “X” marks the spot.

THE MIRACULOUS TIMING OF THANKSGIVING

This isn’t a story about goals and planning. Not today. Today is about thanking God for how far I’ve come because He got me here.

How far has He brought you this year?

Thanksgiving is miraculously timely. Let’s anticipate Advent, the celebration of the Light of the World coming to us – Christmas - with hearts full of the thanksgiving we contemplate now. Yes, Thanksgiving is right where it should be on the calendar. Right before Advent, right before Christmas. We must not skip this step. We’ll fill our baskets with all of the good fruit given to us this year to date so that we can stand back, survey and acknowledge that yes, indeed, there has been and there is fruit. Bountiful fruit.

Then await the coming of the Light. We’ll gather our fruit so that on Christmas Eve we may place our gifts at the foot of the manger for what He has done, what He did, and for what is to come.

Be filled with joy for the love He has for you. For He is always thinking of you.

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Advent.

Little Yellow Bird