Advent is a Truth-Telling Time

Broken Hearts, Bandages, and the Baby who Stayed

Last Sunday, after reading and discussing the fourth chapter of Ecclesiastes with 50-ish incarcerated children of God, Cory ended Sunday School a bit early because we had something else to share. He took out a sheet of paper and began to read. By the second sentence, he was crying. By the fourth, he could barely speak.

This will be our last Sunday at St. Mark’s while we try to navigate what is next. This decision has been agonizing, heartbreaking, and was the choice of last resort. It has taken a toll on our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Even though we will no longer see each other on Sunday mornings, you all know where we live and how to get a hold of us. I will continue to be in work release on Friday afternoons for Bible Study, as well as other times throughout the week. You can always find Shannan at The Window on Mondays and Thursdays.

Our Holy Alliance is bigger than this Sunday School and will continue even though the class is ending. Thank you for loving us.

(an excerpt)

We typed out the words ahead of time because we wanted to be clear and we knew it would be emotional. We were intentionally vague with our friends, some who sniffed through his announcement, one who got up and stood beside me while KP closed us in prayer and I quietly sobbed.

Immediately after the prayer and hugs, we had 50 work release papers to sign, which is as anticlimactic and incongruent as it gets and *precisely* what I have come to expect. The big moments beat from inside the grunt-work and seemingly inconsequential tasks that shape our actual lives. I teased Daweson about his wild handwriting and immediately worried I had hurt his feelings. Melissa scribbled her phone number on a torn scrap of paper. Belinda handed me her phone and basically demanded my contact info. It was regular and it was extra and it was everything it always is.

For over five months I have been intentionally vague here, as well. I still don’t quite know how to talk about all of this, but it’s a dramatic shift in our lives that we couldn’t have imagined and I wanted to let you know, especially as we walk together into the moonlit wait of Advent. I am sure I will eventually have more to say, but for now, just know that my family is safe and well. While we dreaded the outcome that seemed inevitable all along, some of the light has already returned in Cory’s eyes.

We are not interested in splitting a church filled with beautiful souls. We are also acutely concerned for the safety and well-being of everyone within that system.

For five long months, Cory has been the scapegoat for those who needed someone else - anyone else - to be the "bad guy.” There is a cost to being committed to the truth and he paid it in sleepless nights, an anxious mind, and some low-grade depression. My love for him is constant. My respect is profound. As someone who is used to carrying the Big Enneagram 8 energy, it was disorienting at times to be the quiet one. I cannot quantify his level of care for the vulnerable people in our lives or the lengths he will go to for their behalf.

He feels the weight lifting, having simply said the words that needed to be said, having ripped the Band-Aid off a painful gash. I think the word is closure. I am still mostly sad. I catch myself continuing to refer to the church as “ours,” not in a possessive way, but in the way you come to belong to something. I try not to think about it when I drive past it many times a day.

We have tiny hints of what our future Sundays might hold (they are as small and weird as you’d expect.) Cory is still the chaplain and gets to spend his days with his buddies. I still get to pile trays with lunch for some of our Sunday School pals, including Daweson, who seemed to have taken the handwriting ribbing in stride. For this, we are grateful.

I’ve put our family on a firm break through the month of December. I keep calling it a Sabbatical, but you could probably just call it Advent. I have never needed it more.

The above photos was snapped few minutes ago when I noticed the irony of my Portugese nativity set against the supplies for the 5-layer production I now administer to my sad left leg every night before bed.¹ It is exactly right. Baby Jesus and bandages for a broken body. Christmas lights and a broken heart. All I know, the only little thing, is that the Word became flesh and moved into my neighborhood. Jesus’ arrival didn’t stop hard things from happening. It gave us a fixed reference point of hope and healing for when they do.

I plan to spend December thinking about that.

Thank you for loving me and us. I feel it. I know you would have cried with me. I know you would have stood next to me. I know you will wait through the dark with me while I heal. I love you.

For everything there is a season…

A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

Ecclesiastes 3

God on the Ground returns next week!

I am once again running GotG through our Secret Soup paid subscriber list, so you’ll see it dropping into your inbox. The first one will go out next Wednesday and each consecutive installment will arrive every two days. (I’m hoping sending them every-other-day gives some time for reading and processing. In this season of slowing and hunkering down, I don’t want anything to feel pressured or rushed.) I am working on updating the texts from last year, but the bones will be the same. In a season where we enjoy revisiting favorite traditions, I hope we once again enjoy settling into the story of the nativity as seen through the lens of Jesus’ community.

If you know someone who might enjoy God on the Ground, you can gift it! (To gift just GotG, sign up for the monthly option (for your friend) then cancel it on your end after the series wraps.)

1. Left leg update: it’s better than it was five months ago, but I’m coming to grips with the fact that it might never go back to how it was. I might say more about that as well, one day? It’s just that I have grown bone weary of talking about my foot and church and my foot and church and my foot and church. It all seems so dadgum boring at this point!