December musings: Hope.

Going somewhere.

It’s December. It’s December! How can it be? How can the time fly by so quickly? 

I am of course thinking over the last year, and that is only helped by the fact that I am on an art retreat with Leaf. We’ve done this twice over the course of our friendship, mostly because we lived in two different places and wanted to find time to be together. The last time was when Isaac was a newborn. But since Leaf moved to Pai, we’ve talked about wanting to do it again, and since we both needed to come to Vientiane, Laos for visas, we realized we needed to grab the moment! 

So here we are. Yesterday we flew on the tiniest plane, landed in Udon Thani, caught a van up to the border, then walked out and onto a big bus full of Laos people with all their shopping bags. We got off the bus, made our slow way through the border, and into a taxi where we tried to get our heads around all the zeros at the end of the numbers in Laos kip. (I pulled 1,000,000 kip out of the ATM, which is a little over $100. Leaf said, “We’re millionaires!”) Coming to a country where we aren’t familiar with the money throws us back into traveler mode; aware that we can be taken advantage of, aware that there will be mistakes here and there as touts try to “help” us. 

I can understand Laos because it is so similar to Thai, but struggle with speaking because there are different words. But it is different here; more laid back, grubbier, with all of that charm that comes from things being a bit messy. It reminds me of other countries that I love, with smells that bring me into India or Nepal. The huge Mekong river seems to make the air heavy with a damp earthy smell in the evening. Outside my window as I write, there are three types of tin roof. I’m excited for a few days of writing and thinking, plotting my new book and maybe doing some painting. I’m excited to explore an unfamiliar place (but slightly familiar, since we’ve both been here a couple times before) with my dear friend. 

Life has been a bit crazy in the last month. Chinua has been unwell, as one of his blood pressure medications was making him anxious. This changes life for us in a huge way. I have been so busy in my life and in my mind that I sometimes feel like I can’t breathe. But we are muddling through and it’s such good work. The work of having compassion, of working together to be healthy, of covering jobs and tasks for someone with love. Ah, how I want to be made pure. I want the things that come from me, all my work and words and reactions, to flow from mercy.

Christy and Olga and I have been having Bible reading circles, and on Thursday night they came over for one. We had dinner together and then crept upstairs to try to sit and read the Bible in a house that contained eight children. Chinua was watching strange Japanese gameshows with them downstairs, so there was a lot of shouting and scream-laughing that was barely masked by our uninsulated teak floors. But somehow we managed, sitting on the floor in a circle around a candle upstairs. 

And we read and talked a lot about hope. About hope and how it purifies us. The words kill me, they slay me, my heart melts.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

Is this the part of growing older that is the hardest? Continuing in hope? When you know all your own mistakes? And you read the news, and it is consistently disappointing—the depths of contempt people have for one another, the ongoing dismissal of suffering, the lack of empathy. The statistics we pull up to shove in one another’s faces, the ways we justify oppression. 

Come, Lord. Oh, the ugliness breaks my heart.

But it is the same that it has always been, our brokenness and lack of love as humans, the way we need God to fill every cracked place. The way we need to stand in love and continue to act in mercy, no matter the craziness swirling around us like a whirlpool of vicious words and acts. Now more than ever, may I speak in love. Now more than ever, may we have this hope that purifies. One day we shall see him as he is. This hope changes us, rearranges our molecules, lifts our voices, quiets us, reassures us. And right now we can walk forward in hope and love. 

Looking back and looking forward, I long for mercy. Mercy and hope, in my family and in the spaces around. I pray the same for you in this Advent season, as we prepare to celebrate Light in the world. 

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