Leaning into Advent

When I was growing up, my family wasn't really into following the liturgical calendar. We're still not, really. 

But this year more than any year previously I have been appreciating Advent. 

Sometimes Advent is just seen as a period of anticipation, the run up to Christmas, a name for the weeks where we try to focus on remembering the true 'reason for the season' in amongst all the pre-Christmas busyness that seems to take over December.

As far as I understand (and I'm not claiming to be an expert on this subject by any means), that's part of it but not all. Advent is a season of waiting - remembering the long-awaited arrival two thousand years ago and acknowledging that we wait for the second coming now. 

And as we wait, we, along with all of creation, groan. We ready ourselves to remember and to celebrate the birth of the promised King, to remember that "the true light that gives light to everyone" came into the world. To remember that "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." 

The true light has come. And yet we still wait. We still see so much darkness in the world. There is light - hallelujah! As believers, we are light. And yet we await our King's second coming again, when he will be like the light of the sun, burning so fiercely as to extinguish every inch of darkness.

I like how it is put in this opinion piece:

"To practice Advent is to lean into an almost cosmic ache: our deep, wordless desire for things to be made right and the incompleteness we find in the meantime. We dwell in a world still racked with conflict, violence, suffering, darkness. Advent holds space for our grief, and it reminds us that all of us, in one way or another, are not only wounded by the evil in the world but are also wielders of it, contributing our own moments of unkindness or impatience or selfishness."

This year, perhaps more than any other year, I've been aware of the brokenness of this world. Of the ugliness of sin. Of the tragic effects of sin and the Fall. I've seen a lot of things to mourn and grieve over these last few months, and it is right that they be mourned and grieved over. 

And I'm deeply reassured that I don't have to rush into Christmas. Before we sing 'Joy to the world', we can sing 'O come, o come Emmanuel'. I can take time to pause and acknowledge that there is pain and loss and brokenness in this world. That the world is not as it should be. That there is depth to the darkness.

But it's not a hopeless mourning. It's an intake of breath, the expectant pause, before the music rings out. We are hopeful people - literally hope-full. As we look back and celebrate the amazing truth of "our God contracted to a span", we look forward to the day when there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, because the old order of things will have passed away. 

I can look at the darkness and face it head-on because I know that the light has come, and I appreciate the light all the more for having first looked hard at the darkness. And I know that one day there will be no darkness, when the King comes again.

O Come, Thou King of nations bring

An end to all our suffering

Bid every pain and sorrow cease

And reign now as our Prince of Peace

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come again with us to dwell

(Source)

It gets easier and it gets harder

A new foreign family arrived here a few weeks ago. They're staying for three months, thinking about coming to live here longer term. As they're new to the country, don't speak Turkish, are staying close to us and wanted to go to the weekly fruit and vegetable market, I offered to accompany them for their first market trip.

A confession here: I was scared of going to the market for the first year I lived in Turkey. It's usually busy and noisy. Everyone seems in a rush. Plus you have to communicate with the market stall holders - to check the price of something if it isn't displayed, know the difference between the stalls where it's seç al (choose the produce yourself) and the stalls where you ask for the weight you want and they give it to you, understand how much the total is and anything else the market stall holder may ask you. Market stall holders don't usually speak the proper 'Istanbul Turkish' but usually speak less clearly and have more of a regional accent. And then there's the shopping adjustments, such as knowing how much a kilo of strawberries is as opposed to a kilo of potatoes and knowing that you don't buy a few sprigs of mint or parsley but a whole bunch.

(An aside: when we'd been in Istanbul a couple of months, I saw there was a special rate on strawberries in the local supermarket and carefully asked in my best Turkish, "please can I have 200 grams?". The guy weighing out the strawberries looked back at me and said with a questioning tone, "200 grams?". I mentally double-checked my vocabulary and grammar and confirmed "yes, 200 grams." He still looked slightly puzzled, at which I also looked confused, but weighed me out 200 grams of strawberries. I looked at the rather small bag of strawberries he held out to me and realised in an instant that - for a change - I hadn't committed a language fail. No, my fail was a shopping fail and at a price of less than £1 a kilogram, no wonder he was surprised that I was only asking for 200 grams!).

So I found myself wandering around the market with this new family, inwardly cringing that I stick out enough at the market already with three small, fair-haired children and now I was walking round with a couple and their two small children who were also clearly foreigners. Not only that, but we were speaking English between ourselves. We stuck out a mile. I tried to gauge the right distance to keep - they needed to try and do as much for themselves as they could, to try out the few words of Turkish they knew, so I didn't want to do everything for them or permanently hover on their shoulder, but I also needed to be able to help if required.

They did great. But it looked exhausting for them. As I watched them, I was so thankful for how much easier my life is here now that we've been here a few years and speak Turkish. I know how the market system works, I can ask the price of something and know I'll be understood and I can understand the reply. I know the usual pattern of interaction so the transaction process is usually straightforward. When the market stall holder asks something else, I understand it - and actually I know what sorts of things he's likely to be asking anyway.

That extends to life generally here. It's not that life here is easy - but it's easier. There are still misunderstandings and different ways of doing things that confuse us. There are still niggles and stresses in how to get things done here. There is even more bureaucracy and new things to understand now L has his business here. But the normal activities of daily life are a ton easier than they used to be.

And yet at the same time it gets harder.

Every year we spend here, every anniversary we mark, highlights the fact that our roots are growing deeper in this country now. We've spent well over half of our married life in Turkey. Two of our three children were born here and the other can't remember living anywhere but Turkey. Turkey's in our hearts now.

And yet we know that as foreigners here, there's always a measure of uncertainty about how long we'll stay here. So we plant ourselves down firmly here knowing that it is right and good that the longer we live here, the deeper our roots will grow - and the harder it will be when, eventually, we have to wrench those roots up.

We hope that our roots in Turkey will go thick and strong. There are so many things we love about the Turkish people and culture. We care deeply about this country and pray that God blesses it. And we know that whenever the day comes to leave, whether in months or in many years time, it will be painful - and that will be a right kind of pain. And that's okay - what would it say about our life here if leaving wasn't painful in someway?

So it gets easier. And it gets harder. And the best thing of all - the Lord who was with us when we lived in the UK, and with us when we came to Turkey and every day life became so hard, and is with us now as every day life gets easier and our roots get deeper, will be with us every step of the way in the future too.