Some Thoughts for Advent

I lied at the doctor's appointment that day. We sat there, me and the boys, discussing what would happen if worse came to worse, and I was trying to say all the right big-sisterly sorts of reassuring things, when the doctor walked in, breaking our discussion off mid-sentence. He went through that usual check off sheet--have you started any new medications? Who's the president? And so on. But what was I supposed to say when he asked me how my moods were? I couldn't tell him that life was going to heck in a hand basket. So I smiled and said great, just great. Well, I don't think he believed me, anyway.

That's the problem with pain, though. So much of it is hidden. So much of it makes us invisible, because our real selves--the ones who love and hurt and feel--have to be kept behind a happy smiling mask.

The man behind you in the bleachers is being mocked by his co-workers because of his epilepsy. The woman beside you in the pew is being harassed by social services and is afraid she'll lose her children--even though she's a great mom. The family declares bankruptcy. The marriage is rocky but somehow survives his porn addiction, her affair. The adoption is terminated. The baby is forgotten in the car.

Some kinds of pain are tricky because it can be hard to find a healthy or appropriate way to talk about them. It's hard to talk about them without hurting, or even endangering the people involved. There are many good families who are harassed by social services--I have known at least three. But you can't go to your co-workers and say "man, I'm having a bad week! I'm afraid of losing my children!" It doesn't look good.

And so his troubled past still haunts you. You have forgiven him, and yet you worry each time he comes home so late from work, or when he goes off on those business trips. And you wonder who you can turn to. Because it's so easy for us to label each other based on what we have done, or even what we look like, what our titles are. Instead of really seeing each other. You love him. And you know he really has repented. He really has changed. You don't want them labeling him, labeling your marriage...You just wish there was someone you could talk to.

Pain makes us invisible. We no longer see each other, we no longer see ourselves. But one of the amazing things about Christ is that He chose to become the ultimate Invisible Man. He chose to become us--first by taking on flesh, living in this world where we get rocks in our sandals and tangles in our hair; and then by taking on our sin, becoming our sin, becoming us so that we could become His righteousness.

God knows what it is to be invisible, overlooked, forgotten. And often, it is me who is doing the forgetting. God loves us enough to risk Himself and be forgotten. The God of the Universe sees us and knows us. So it is in turning to Him, we become less invisible. It is in turning to Him that we can know and be known.