“Well, I broke a piece off of the Rocking Santa while I was pulling it out of storage,” Dad said when I called him the other day. I caught my breath in the moment of awkward sadness. One more thing broken. One more memory chipped away. One more thing my mom loved that she would never be able to enjoy now that she is in Memory Care. One more piece of our life with her that wouldn’t be the same.

Since selling the house four years ago, Dad has one by one broken items that belonged to his family or Mom’s. He had held on to these fence posts that marked out the territory of his family identity, history, and memory. They were strategically placed around the apartment as if to say, “Everything is still the same.” They were physical connections to people and places that lived with him and within him all along. They were signposts to something important, but not important enough.

As each object is mended or boxed up and put away, Dad is assuming the role of becoming himself the memory keeper. The value of the things he has held on to is giving way to memories that are living with a depth he wasn’t capable of before this part of his journey to ultimate meaning.

The truth is that change is the essence of life. That existential crises are our greatest moments, passages in which we become more soulful, more transcendent, more thoughtful.

I must admit that there are things that I don’t want to break. Memories I don’t want to lose. I still create ways to convince myself that “everything is the same.”

I don’t know why I hang on to structures and routines and things for comfort and security. I don’t understand why even when I see its futility, I cling to the familiar and try to control things in order to reduce my anxiety.

The truth is that change is the essence of life. That existential crises are our greatest moments, passages in which we become more soulful, more transcendent, more thoughtful.

My experience with brokenness began with a stroke when I was just twenty-one. During the next forty years, Jesus visited me regularly with events that chipped away at what I thought was mine forever. Holding these things too tightly I had lived too close to the surface.   

Just what does it mean to plunge deep into the capacity of the human soul to feel, to suffer, to glory, to remember, to cry, to laugh, to dream? Does it perhaps happen only when the things that we thought constituted memories are chipped and broken and quietly laid away?

We have no way of knowing the tender way in which God will open us to our own inner worlds. But we can be certain of this: God will turn us inside out and upside down through losses and sorrows probably many times in our life to accomplish in us what we so desire in ourselves.

Advent is a perfect time to reflect on the way the Lord is coming with song and jubilation to reconnect you to things deep and abiding in your life. For everything that chips and breaks, every memory you need to tuck away, every tear of nostalgia that is shed, God is kneading your heart, opening it to deeper presence, a greater nobility, and relaxed openness to the movement of love and grace.

Zion, herald of good news, go up on a high mountain. Jerusalem, herald of good news, raise your voice loudly. Raise it, do not be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with strength, and his power establishes his rule. His wages are with him, and his reward accompanies him. He protects his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in the fold of his garment. He gently leads those that are nursing (Isaiah 40:9-11).

Image by 12138562 from Pixabay