Un-Boxed (Ben Howard)

 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

- Matthew 6: 27 

So here's the flip side of our theme this week: sometimes speaking our needs during Advent can make us brood. And more than brood: worry. 

This isn't just the high-strung holiday worries of 'did I remember all the gifts?' or 'will we need more stuffing?," it's the BIG STUFF worry, like "that I'm losing the ones that I hold dear." 

Taking time to wonder about the big stuff can be productive, but when it turns into worry, running around in the same tight mental loops, then it can make us feel so small: "just a blade in the grass, spoke unto the wheel." Worse, we can convince ourselves that everything we've ever done is wrong and that we'll "become what [we] deserve."

This feeling may be more familiar to some of us than others. Some of us mask these doubts and worries with constant activity or with ego-blustering that hides our groundlessness. Nonetheless, we've almost all had that moment when we recognize the true depth of our brokenness and neediness and think: I really am a terrible mess. Maybe this is what I deserve.

The Fear by Ben Howard. Lyrics HERE.

Fear of our own unworthiness is much different than knowing that we do nothing to 'merit' God's love and grace. Fear of our unworthiness is a small room with peeling walls, a life lived with worry keeping us intdoors. Most critically, fear of our unworthiness is un-Christian, even though so many of our theologies and churches use this as a tactic to convince us of other things: that we must act a certain way, say certain things, or believe in just the right balance... otherwise God's love will be revoked.

The truth is that Christ came to hang out with the screw ups. He surrounded himself with good but flawed friends, loved them past their betrayal, and hasn't given up on this crazy world since. We have been promised that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and yet we live our days acting like it might not be true.

Luckily, during Advent, we are called back to ourselves. Not the ego-self of "I'm just fine, okay!" and not the shame-self of "I'm unworthy." We are called to the true Self, which God created and loves, which is already whole and free. The fierce glow of that Christmas star cast a new light on all who sought it out: it revealed that life should not be lived in the confines of fear, and that our worries can't change the beautiful intentions which God has for Creation.

How will you say your need, trusting that even in your brokenness and neediness you are also beloved and whole?

May you enter Advent remembering that, individually and communally, we are freed from the stiff confines of fear, doubt, worry and shame by a God who lavishes us with love beyond our imaginings.

                                                                                                                        - Anna