We bought an angel. One of those lighted tall twiggy angels for our front yard Christmas display. I wanted a new lighted twiggy nativity scene but the one I found was sold out. So I settled on this angel.
We did not need any more yard décor. But 2020.
I felt we needed to go bigger and brighter to cheer up our street (or our family or the world, who knows). We paid to have roof lights hung. We bought a few more items for the front. None of them go together. We have a dog and a Santa. An angel and a polar bear. Charlie Brown and Snoopy with a Christmas tree. We have white lights and colored lights. It is happy.
Merry and bright.
After it was all up, there was a big rain storm Friday and Saturday. Then winds from a cold front hit on Sunday. So the yard blow ups were all muddy and that brand new angel was splat on the ground.
Her upper body did not want to stay connected to her lower body. Her wings kept disconnecting. I stood there in the cold with my arms wrapped around this angel begging her (in my head) to just stay assembled!
At that moment, I almost stepped outside of myself and saw me and this angel in a wrestling match on my front lawn. Her collapsing every time I let go. God please let this angel stay connected so I can JUST GO INSIDE, I begged in my head.
WAIT.
Excuse me, what was that?
YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT.
Lest you think I’m losing my mind, I often have conversations with God in my head, over the big and small. A back and forth dialogue. There’s no booming voice. No audible whisper. Really, it’s usually just an impression or a word.
So here we were. Me, a lawn angel, and God…
I’ve had to do some waiting the past few weeks.
Waiting for news. Waiting and praying that somehow, some way, God would just speed up the process of me getting the answer for which I’m doing all the waiting.
No chance.
I’m sort of terrible at waiting.
I’m a woman of action.
I need to DO.
So, of course, God is constantly letting me wait. Because He needs me to learn a lesson already for Pete’s sake!!!
I realized, while hugging a twiggy angel, that I’d been offered several messages about waiting over the past few days. A sermon. A post. Podcast, song, reading, FB group, text…
The message is something like this: Waiting = Hope.
Don’t miss it.
Waiting = Hope.
Waiting (apparently) expands your faith.
I’m even doing an advent study right now and this week’s meditation is on silence/waiting. The author leading the study shared this passage from Henri Nouwen:
I still like to keep up the illusion that I am in control of my own life. I like to decide what I most need, what I will do next, what I want to accomplish and how others will think of me. While being so busy running my own life, I become oblivious to the gentle movements of the Spirit of God within me, pointing me in directions quite different from my own. It requires a lot of inner solitude and silence to become aware of these divine movements. God does not shout, scream or push. The Spirit of God is soft and gentle like a small voice or a light breeze. It is the spirit of love.
It’s the 1 Kings 19 description of Elijah’s encounter with God – not in the earthquake or fire but in the gentle whisper.
Waiting. In the quiet.
There is so little quiet around these days. I mean, even when we’re stuck at home, we fill it with noise. So how on earth are we going to hear the still small voice of God over the din?
All too often we’re stuck waiting way longer than we need to because we just can’t hear anything.
Until we’re on our quiet front lawn cleaning and reassembling Christmas décor… or maybe that’s just me.
Taking time to wrestle with the things we can’t see, the things that test our faith (For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic powers over this present darkness…).
I’m still waiting.
And wrestling.
If you’re worried about the twiggy angel, well she’s standing up by herself now. A combination of Bray’s garbage ties, some extra metal stakes, and persistence paid off.
For now.
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