"Before each beginning, there must be an ending. Sitting in the rubble, I can see the stars." --Nichole Nordeman

The days swirl around me--sometimes in slow motes of spiraling patterns and often in tornado-like chaos.  Regardless of how quickly or slowly I feel they move, they do move and I am nudged into the next minutes of reality.  

In these last six months, nothing has changed and everything is changing.  Christ has continued His slow process (not slow on His own account...slow because I am often an unwilling or unable participant and must be dragged along) in me.  It started with a simple command to stop it.  Stop the endless cycle of self-deprecation that had become second nature.  Stop the constant focus on me, me, me to end the nagging feeling that I am somehow doing it wrong, getting it wrong, being wrong.

The reality is much more beautiful than anything I could write with my own hand--Christ.  

In the last half year, there has been the reality of Christ--His sacrifice, His presence and His deep and abiding love.  Ultimately, what He is outweighs anything I've damaged or destroyed.  There is freedom in that reality.  

I've been most struck by that insistent love during our family Advent reading.  With two toddlers, the whole tradition is a mess.  They bring pillows and wrestle and repeat what their father reads or beg for more juice or wander around the living room.  I'm not sure how much story they get, but I'm also not sure it matters.  We keep telling it.

Thank God for the retelling.  It's an opportunity to sit in the reality around me--the mess--and wonder at God's Holy presence in the midst.  He is not finished.  We are not finished.  

But the expectant hope is He has promised Christ as the author and finisher of our faith.  And the rest of what swirls around us--quickly or slowly--has already been conquered by the Savior.  He is enough.  His promise is enough.