Tag: anxiety

the God of Grit

O great mystery,

and wonderful sacrament,

that animals should see the Lord born,

lying in a crib;

The medieval hymn, O Magnum Mysterium, expresses awe at the humility of Christ’s birth. That the birth of the King of Kings should be first witnessed to by beasts of burden, and that the spouse of the Holy Spirit lies on hard ground amidst scratchy hay to labor– this is a magnum mysterium, a great mystery.

During different stages of my life, I have pondered different aspects of Christ’s birth during the Advent and Christmas seasons. As a young adult, the wonder and majesty struck me; as a young mother, the discomfort and peril struck me; at other times, the historical and cultural circumstances have struck me. But this Christmas, it has been poignantly sensory. I am there experiencing the stench of animal urine and dung, the smell and scratch of hay, the frigid night air, the veil of darkness, the base life-sounds of bleating and newborn cries.

This past year I have tried to be honest and receptive in my relationship with God, which has revealed a lot of repressed anger and hurt towards God. I had to work through the shame of feeling angry before I could actually confront the origins of this anger. Interiorly, I wearied, stopped wrestling the darkness, and I’m now just sitting with it. While that’s necessary, it’s dark and cold here at times. But I know this is part of deliverance and healing.

It’s been liberating to stop forcing emotions, like pulling cellophane over a bucket of muck. Right now, Mass is an act of obedience; Communion is a still, quiet moment at the cross. But this is an improvement from running out of Church during the consecration, which is where I was a year ago. Part of that healing has been peeling away the angelic, gilded depictions of Christ and the Church, and discovering the grit. Only then do I see myself and the life God has walked with me through. Only then do I remember that God indeed has been Emmanuel, God with me– not just in consolation and revelation, but He has been faithful in all things, all places, even under the cold veil of night. I don’t know if I believe that yet, but at least I can imagine that I will get there.

What does it mean that God chose to be born in a dank, stench-filled cave, surrounded by dumb animals? If Mary was the beloved of His heart, why would he allow her to give birth in cold, pungent darkness? Magnum Mysterium opens with, “O great mystery”. This, like so much of Christ’s life, is a mystery which theologians debate and mystics contemplate. But what we can know with the same senses that Christ incarnated, is that His birth, while miraculous and mysterious, was also one of stench and grit.

This simple reality makes me feel loved. As John of the Cross wrote, “this delight within your Bride / Would great be increased, / If the flesh she is endowed with / She saw you also shared”. The stench and grit that I am working through is there with baby Jesus and the Holy Family. I will sit with them in the dark, chilly cave, in the great mystery, and trust that salvation is here.

O Blessed Virgin, whose womb

was deemed worthy to bear

the Lord Jesus Christ.

Alleluia!

the January blues

It was a relief to leave the hospital after having a baby (except the first time, I was mostly shocked that those professionals were sending me home with a new human). I was anxious to get through the transition of having a new baby, which I could only really start in our own home. But there was also a sense of dread as I anticipated the sleepless nights, aching body and breasts. And there’s the actual, clinical sense of dread that accompanies anxiety and depression, the onset of which I always felt as I crossed the threshold from the sliding doors of the hospital into the parking lot. I didn’t want to go back, but I didn’t really want to go forward.

The same kind of feeling, though not as strong and over-powering, comes over me in January. Christ has been born, the shepherds and wise men have dispersed, now the gifts are safely in the care of a little family fleeing for their lives into Egypt. It’s as though my heart is with the Holy Family as they transition from the stable, only they have something real to dread (which they probably didn’t, because they were, you know, holy, and totally trusted in God’s providence). My sense of dread isn’t for something real, like a madman hunting me down (like, Herod); it can probably be explained away with chemical mis-firings in the brain, hormones, or whatever. A piece of it is probably the shorter days, less light and a lot less sun. Maybe it’s the let-down of an exciting Christmas season—joy and stress jumbled together in my mom-brain.

And so the new year looms before me, a stranger: another adventure to live, joys to experience, sorrows to bear, laughter to hear, tears to shed, piles of laundry, loads of dishes, meals to cook, new shoes and coats to buy as those humans keep growing. There are people who are blessed with optimism and are able to look ahead at a strange new world with energy and excitement; I’m just one of those other kinds of people who looks ahead and thinks to herself, Steady the buffs, old girl. I think it’s something like, Hey, didn’t we just wrap up 2018? as though there should be an interim period of nothing-year where time stands still and no one has to do laundry.

In the meantime, regular exercise (or, irregular also has to work) getting a few precious quiet moments to think, the Sacraments, some great reads, old and new tunes, as well as a healthy diet (plus chocolate) all help with the chemical mis-firings and anxiety levels. And putting the year in perspective. (Also, it doesn’t hurt to chase a capsule of Vitamin D with a shot of whiskey.)