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what child is this?

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  What child is this, who lay to rest 

                               On Mary’s lap is sleeping?

                                                    Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,

                                                                                      While shepherds watch are keeping?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this tiny baby in the manger–how he came so humbly into the world and in such an unassuming way…the image of a young Mary cradling her newborn, resting on piles of hay in a humble stable with Joseph beside them…

It all captivates me year round, but especially at Christmastime.

When I lived in Egypt, we visited places that somehow drew me closer to the scenes we see everywhere depicting the Holy Family’s journey to Bethlehem. I’d never imagined walking through places where I could actually envision Mary on a donkey, full with our Savior, and I don’t think I realized what my heart was doing as we wandered through a small desert town ten years ago. Now though, I can’t separate the two in my head–this experience of dusty feet and a vast starry sky in my memory and the story of the long, long road to a safe place for Mary to give birth to Christ.

Tonight, I am especially captivated by Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the stable, because I’m trying to reconcile the true Christmas with the one I’m experiencing here in the world in 2015. I can’t help but think about the simplicity of what happened; even though I know that Mary was in labor and Joseph was hurriedly seeking a place for her to give birth, I don’t recognize any striving in the story.

Mary and Joseph were acting in obedience to God–clearly blessed by a high and holy calling on their lives, and yet, very, very human. As it was the first Christmas, I suppose there were no traditions of the holiday to consider, but still…

Where was the striving?

On the night Christ was born, the Glory of the Lord shone brightly on the hills of Bethlehem and Mary and Joseph set eyes on their baby boy. No doubt he was perfect in every way, but still a baby who needed to be cared for and loved, nurtured and fed. He was human and divine, and the young, newlywed couple became mother and father to the Son of God.

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When this took place, Mary and Joseph were not preoccupied with everything they had to do back at home or how well prepared they’d be for visitors. They lived out their reality by living in it–by being present in the moment and not allowing anything else to overshadow it. I’m sure the two felt the weight of what had just happened, and yet, nothing about their story tells us there was panic or alarm.

Why would they strive or worry when God had orchestrated this plan from the beginning? When they knew that they had partaken in a miracle, and that the whole world would change because of the new life in their arms?

Why, when I’m trying to celebrate this most holy night in a reverent way, do I find myself striving each Christmas season? 

The very first Christmas and its amazing, beautiful, life-changing story had nothing to do with striving. It didn’t speak hurry and stress and worry then, and it doesn’t now.

I am quite-imperfectly pursuing a graceful December in hopes of living out more of the peace that came on the night Christ was born 2,015 years ago. It doesn’t feel as simple as just resting and letting all of the Christmas “things” go (although Christmas would come anyway, details or not), but I’m certain that it can be more simple than a whole month full of days consumed by the dazzle of consumer Christmas and the striving to accomplish every last Christmas task.

I’m not trying to be lax about the holiday. I just want to celebrate it well. And I don’t want a 2015 version of Christmas to detract from the ancient miracle that we seek to remember in the carefully placed nativity scene.

I want my babies to know the baby in the manger. The child who laid to rest on Mary’s lap, asleep.

The whole world was waiting for a Savior then, and it still is today. But now there should be even more peace than on the day of His birth, because we know that He has come and He will come again.

There is no striving in the birth narrative. Just grace. A humble place for the King of All Kings to enter the world as one of us–a place of welcome. Of reverence. Of rest.

  Raise, raise a song on high,

                                     The virgin sings her lullaby

                                                                          Joy, joy for Christ is born,

                                                                                                           The babe, the son of Mary.

May we find respite from striving this Christmas. And may we take rest in the lap of a Holy God who sent his Son as a baby, that we might have life and life to the full!

molly madonna

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come to the table.

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I grew up in a big family, and we all lived in close proximity. We all genuinely enjoyed each other, too, so our holiday get togethers were naturally life-giving, high energy affairs. My Gramma Donna loved do life around a meal, and she and my mom and aunts would sit down after dinner at one family gathering to plan for the next…who would bring appetizers, fruit, dips, salads, breads, desserts. We were approximately twenty strong in total, with always enough food to feed at least twenty more.

Not one of us ever left a visit to Gramma’s empty, and our bellies were full, too.

Something I learned from watching our family over so many years was the value of showing up. For decades, everyone came to sit down together in one place, and multiple times a year. We didn’t just celebrate Christmas and Easter, but Thanksgiving and birthdays, anniversaries and summertime.

We gathered because we liked each other. Because family was important. Because Gramma glued us all together and it was a sweet, sweet space to enter again and again.

We didn’t have Pinterest growing up, and if we had, Gramma wouldn’t have needed it anyway. Her table was always simple and lovely, leaving room for an impromptu game of cards between meals, making it easy add a chair or swap a place at dinner time. Her heart was into the details, certainly, but she was practical, she used what she had, and she spent her energies focused on loving and feeding the people who sat with her–not on the table itself.

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As such, everything about her called us to come to the table, no matter the visit. Oh, to steal away some of those hours again now, in the place that was always home to me no matter where I’d been or where I was headed next!

Gramma’s table was extraordinary because it welcomed. It was perfectly set, not with china and silver or handmade centerpieces, but by a woman who loved well and who was deeply loved in return.

We would always come back, because we couldn’t stay away.

Now, in my own house, four years removed from the last time I ever sat at Gramma’s table, I want so much for mine to look like hers–for Henry and Eloise to grow up knowing that our table is at the center of our home and of who we are. I want friends, new and old, to gather here and feel the deep sense of belonging I felt growing up around Gramma’s table. I want our space to be one of invitation and welcome, and I want that to be the case no matter how simply or elaborately I set the dining room for a meal.

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Advent is a season of invitation for all people. Not just for those who believe that Christ came to earth as a baby, then suffered, died and rose again. For ALL people. If Christ could come down from heaven and take on flesh, then surely he can and wants to welcome strangers to His table.

I imagine, as we’re invited to partake in the celebration of Christmas as believers, that God is setting a table, preparing a feast for all of His children and then many more.

Isn’t this what grace is all about?

This season, as we turn our sights toward physical preparations for the celebration that is to come, let us also prepare our hearts as simply set tables–ones that welcome without condition, without presupposition, without inflexibility. In this graceful December, I pray that we would be able and willing to add one more chair, to adjust our mindsets as easily as our place settings, and to be people of invitation and welcome, not only at holiday meals, but in our souls as we seek to fully celebrate our Savior King.

saving a place for you here,

molly madonna

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words to speak.

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I have loved words my whole life. Books, poetry, song lyrics, inscriptions, conversations, prayers. Not yet realizing their power, words shaped me from an early age and became a part of me at my core. I spent my time telling stories, keeping journals, reciting Shel Silverstein at the top of my lungs for anyone who would listen. (We have video of the latter, and it’s fairly embarrassing.)

Each time I sat down to write, I felt good about putting pen to paper. I had created something. It always welled up from somewhere unknown and bubbled out of me, onto the page and into the world, whether anyone else would ever read it or not. Looking back, I had no idea I’d ever write to share thoughts intentionally with others. I had no inkling of a space called mollymadonna.com. I knew I wanted to write books somehow, but I didn’t know how I’d ever walk that path.

Over time, I grew up. My words did, too.

Fastforward to now, and I am constantly exploring the power of words–written and spoken–in my adult life. I have more influence than I’ve ever had, if only because there are two precious little people who cling to my words and depend on them to shape how they feel about themselves, about each other, and about the world, every, single day.

The weight of responsibility that I feel to love well through words grows greater all of the time. Recognizing how much my own words and their delivery matter to our children continues to stretch me as I evaluate my communication with everyone I meet.

Sometimes, I get these words just right, and quite often, I get them woefully wrong.

When I speak out of urgency, frustration, worry or exhaustion, no one gets the best version of me. I know that I’ve been entrusted a voice that I might steward it well, and I’m challenged on many days to refine and revise and edit–just like I did writing papers all through high school and college.

As it is with so many things in life, honing words in person or in print are muscles I need to exercise regularly to keep fit. The way that I speak to Jason, our kiddos, or the customer service agent on the other end of the phone actually makes a difference.

I have the ability to speak life or death every time I open my mouth…every time I pound out letters on the keyboard.

I love the weight of this responsibility, and yet I find it one of my greatest challenges. There are moments every day when I have to work harder than I’d like to admit to speak life-giving words. And there have been so many times when I know my words weren’t life-giving at all. Human nature, I realize, but I’m working hard to shift this reality to something better–something that could honor God and be found worthy of His affirmation.

This is why #gracefulDecember comes as no surprise to me now, for such a time as this.

There just isn’t room in this broken and hardened world for me to take liberties with my words.

I know we live in a time and culture defined by individuals pursuing freedom of self expression and the right to “be” whoever and whatever they want to be. I know that the popular thing to do is to preach tolerance and self-discovery and carte blanche on everything, everywhere. And I disagree.

If I expect that I might have an impact or influence on my children or the world, I am also going to be sure to set my words and actions on something foundational, moral, Biblical, and perhaps, unpopular. I did some deep digging and self-exploring for a handful of years when I was younger, and  where I ended up in that pursuit was unhappy, unfulfilled, mad at the world and confused. I thought maybe my own way was a better way, so I turned my back on Truth for a while to find it.

Thank goodness words and story win my heart every time, because the story at the end of that path would have been a dark and dreary one, and the story God was moving me to return to is full of light.

Pursuing the story of Light in a darkened world is not a small or easy choice, but a redemptive one. This is why I’ll keep loving words and trying to love others through them, too.

In the midst of a busy holiday season, there are pressures on everyone that don’t exist at other times of the year. There are pressures we don’t see when we’re brushing past others in the grocery store after work or in the hallway at school drop-off.

Some people are coasting on the sheer joy of the holidays, but I’ve not met too many of those. Most of us are doing our best to be joyful, to be “Christmassy,” to live in a spirit of giving and charity and hope–all while juggling things beneath the surface or behind the scenes that we don’t share in the check out line or out loud at a holiday party.

As we wander through this season of Advent, moving ever-closer to Christmas and the hopeful light it casts on any of us waiting to receive it, let’s not forget that this time of year brings so many other things to light, too. Loneliness. Loss. Heartache. Financial burdens. Challenging family dynamics. Time constraints. Deep, hard-to-face emotion.

Our words have power–perhaps more in this vulnerable holiday season than at any other time of year. Let the words that we have for the world and for one another be filled with grace in these precious days. We must hold them thoughtfully and offer them up with the hope that, if only for just one person, they might speak light and life in this graceful December.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Ps. 19.14

celebrating this, my 500th post to you, and the opportunity you’ve afforded me to share the words on my heart, here in this space, for so long. may they always speak in a way that honors, uplifts, encourages, and gives life!

molly madonna

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waiting on Christmas.

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You can decorate to the nines and pile presents high up around the tree. You can set the perfect table. You can show up to every holiday party in the ugliest Christmas sweater and bring the very best dish to pass. You can have your Christmas playlist set in October, and you can shop craft stores in September for first pick of everything red and green.

You can do all of these things and miss it entirely–the still small voice of Christmas tugging at you in a way that none of the above ever could or ever will.

Even though I know deep down that the true meaning of Christmas is outside of glitz and glamour, I think I’ve tasted a watered down version of this beautiful season because the distractions that surround it are all so seemingly attractive and full of sparkle.

Isn’t this true of so many things in life? How many times have I started in on something with great intention, but then been too easily drawn in another direction?

We pulled out decorations this weekend, and Jason hauled them downstairs in bins so that we could “put up Christmas,” as if hanging wreaths and setting out decorative pillows could translate into Christmas actually arriving here in the little blue house. Undeniably, the lights on the tree and each memorable ornament lend a spirit of Christmas to our home in this season. But if I think for a moment that putting up the tree translates to Christmas descending on our space, I have some heart work to do.

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As timing would have it, the first day of December fell on a graceful Tuesday this year. Tuesdays are our down day in the week. Yesterday morning, Christmas boxes still strewn about the living room and ornaments just waiting to breathe, there was room in the day to let the morning stretch itself out wide. The kids and I decorated and played, danced and sang, twirled and decorated some more. This isn’t the norm for us–in fact, I’ve discovered I’m actually quite terrible at engaging in play the way the kiddos always wish I would. But yesterday, held accountable by the advent of this graceful December, and desiring that Henry and Eloise would experience something set apart this Christmas season, I swallowed down all of the things that didn’t register as true Christmas in my heart.

We stayed in our pjs long past lunchtime, which is foreign and uncomfortable for me, but a delight to the kids. We danced with snowflake wands and sang along to Frozen, sprinkled the tree with ornaments as playing and dancing permitted, and read together about Jesus’ own family tree.

I tried to focus on ushering breath into the first day of December. Honestly, it went against the grain of everything within me. Even though I’m not dwelling on lists at the moment, there were plenty of things I would have loved to accomplish by nap time that were sidelined instead. But here’s what I realized in the midst of doing my best to live gracefully throughout the day:

Christmas is arriving.

Christmas isn’t something I can manufacture–not in anything I produce, not in any number of decorations, and not in my heart.

Christmas happens. It happens when we’re giving it space and room to gracefully and quietly come in.

It happened when an unsuspecting young woman said yes to a holy, trustworthy God. It happened when her husband believed with her that the fulfillment of God’s promises and plan were not too great for them to cradle together. It happens when little ones draw close to hear stories of this Jesus who came down to earth as a tiny babe.

I couldn’t have found Christmas at Hobby Lobby or TJ Maxx or somewhere online yesterday, because both the day and my spirit begged for something different. Instead, Christmas came in on the heels of ornaments clumped together on boughs at two year old height. It came raw and unpolished, imperfect and full of grace in the wonder of something arriving through unencumbered eyes.

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A graceful December, for me, means an exercise in self-restraint. It also means a prayerful consideration of the day, every morning, before my own desires and plans get in the way of Christmas truly happening in my home and heart.

I think it lovely that so many of us have the time and resources to create spaces in our homes that remind us it’s Christmas time. No doubt this brings joy to little ones, and to all of us who carry fond memories of how magically Christmas descended on the world when we were young. I’m grateful, too, that no matter how much or how little we do to “put up Christmas” around the house, it’s going to come anyway–and more gracefully, perhaps, when we set our sights on the empty and expectant manger, breathing deeply together at this time of year in wonder and in wait.

Praying that you find room to breathe deeply today,

molly madonna

 

 

 

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the world needs a breathing treatment, and i’m no exception.

I remember the cold rush of relief that came as soon as they opened the door and carried me, bundled, out into the stinging winter night. I remember that first gasping breath–sharp air coming into my lungs in a hurry, abating the tension I’d shouldered just seconds earlier. I was little. Three or four or five, and no stranger to the steam bath, this late night mid-winter routine, the scurrying into the car on the way to the hospital for another holy, life-giving breathing treatment. Croup and pneumonia loved to take up residence in my tiny body. I could tell any doctor that the dynamic duo was back before the tests would prove it.

What I didn’t know then was that this pattern–this strain for deep breath and the desperate need for relief, time after time, was something my body would overcome. I didn’t know that my lungs would grow strong, that too many nights of breathing treatments would come to an end. I also couldn’t see back then that these very clear memories from childhood would someday serve me metaphorically in adulthood.

Holding Our Breath

I don’t always notice it at first, but in the tense moments of my life, I hold my breath. Subconsciously, I stop allowing air to fill up my lungs. I put a hold on this very natural and necessary pattern in my body, instead restricting life-giving, essential air from moving through me. When I do breathe, my efforts become shallow–I stop receiving the fullness that my body was created to involuntarily accept. I can only imagine what this does to everything within me…systems operating on less power, blood flowing without the same clarity that it should, my nervous system going into fight or flight mode instead of existing in a restful, peaceful state.

Without meaning to, I send myself back to that place of desperately needing that late night gasp of cold air. I’ve grown so accustomed to this that often, I don’t even realize I’m tensing up in every way.

I go back to old patterns and behaviors because I’ve not yet conditioned myself to step out of them–to find sweet breath in what I know, and to accept sure footing over instability.

Saturday Morning Yoga

In the depths of winter this past year, I was trapped in another season of perpetual breath holding. Jason had been hit by a truck only months earlier, and we were still recovering from that when my doctor told me we needed to run a whole host of testing to rule out two different types of cancer in my body. I’d never felt more completely like the wind had been knocked out of me. I waded through weeks of unknown, holing up inside of myself, lacking breath, begging God not to allow this type of circumstance into my life when I was so committed to mothering our two small, precious babes.

I’m not sure how my body hung on through this season. By a thread, I think. My shallow breathing and the restricted air that defined those days made everything feel dark, shaky, in desperate need of restoration. In a place of total brokenness and instability in my soul, I said yes to a Saturday morning Holy Yoga class for some hopeful relief. My dear friend had recently become certified, and she promised this time on Saturday mornings would be set on worship and prayer and seeking out God. I needed all of those things, and so, with a new mat and a struggling spirit in tow, I wandered, broken, into class that first, chilly Saturday morning.

Having done yoga a handful of times at this point, I had no idea whether I’d love or hate it. I felt completely vulnerable in every way. As it turns out, this was exactly how I’d needed to come to my mat that day, and it’s been exactly how I’ve needed to come to my mat so many Saturdays since. It’s hard to describe what happens in a Holy Yoga class, because there is nowhere else in my life that I lay mere inches from strangers and pursue God in such a deep and reverent way. (Ok, there is nowhere else in my life that I lay mere inches from strangers, period, which I figure is probably a good thing.)

On my mat, I am completely focused on letting the rest of life fall away while I welcome healing and filling up from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I cry weep. I feel stripped of pretense. And I breathe. Not only do I take in breath and push it away, but I do so deeply. It’s an exercise I think my body had completely forgotten.

As with any healthy habit, I have to practice this deep breathing day in and day out. Yoga has helped me to figure out how to do this, but I still have to go back each week and ingrain the pattern a little deeper into who I am. I believe it’s working for the reason that it isn’t just a physical work. These deep breaths come along with me giving up what I know to be true about myself and my circumstances, instead replacing thoughts about my reality with meditations on the reality of Christ.

As it turns out, and despite any realities I may face on a given week, the truths about who God is–his character and how he sees me and loves me–are way stronger than the fears and truths I believe about who I am, about this fleeting life here on earth.

In order to be physically human in this world, I must breathe. But in order to live in the fullness of life I’ve been given this side of eternity, I must breathe in Christ.

Our Need for Air

A week ago last night, we were going to bed late when we heard Eloise breathing over the monitor. The sounds coming from her little body were all too familiar. Just after midnight, I climbed our stairs to find her awake and struggling for air. I brought her down to our bed to keep a closer eye on her, hopeful that her lungs would resolve and she could get a peaceful night’s sleep. Instead, after a little while of watching her patterned breaths become more and more shallow, we decided she’d need to go to the ER. Her little legs tremored. The look in her eyes was pleading and scared. I flashed back to those nights as a child, remembering that feeling of desperation and the way my parents came to the rescue with help each time. We bundled her up and I took her in.

Right up to the ER doors, Eloise was panicked. She shook as I took her out of the carseat, reminding her over and over that she was ok and that the doctors would help. No sooner did we cross the threshold than her breath became even. Her struggle slowed. Her body relaxed in my arms. Even at two years old, it seems, we recognize where help comes from and we can rest when we know we’re in good hands. Observing the change that came over Eloise that night, I realized that, inherently, we all just want to know how the next breath is going to come. 

Feeding Fear or Breathing Love

I’m currently reading Sara Hagerty’s book, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things. I’m taking it in as I’m able, a chapter here and a chapter there, and this morning her words blessed me so deeply as I’m working through this idea of breath and breathing rightly:

“Adoration is exploration. The Father loves to be explored. We underestimate the power that our knowing Him has in moving His heart. We underestimate the power that our moving His heart has on our lives.

Fear loses oxygen when every moment suspends itself under the purpose of bringing Him glory, of knowing His name and His nature.

Sometimes, instead of leading us up and out of those fears, big and small, He lets us live them. He gives us over to them. Because it’s in this giving over to our fears that we find the perfect love that frees us from them. Forever.”

Fear loses oxygen when we live our lives for the purpose of bringing God glory. Isn’t that beautiful?!

I don’t know about you, but in the wake of recent events in Paris and all over the world, I have struggled to fight back fear and, in moments, to pursue the perfect love that frees us from it. I hate the evil that swirls around us–sometimes so obviously, and sometimes so subversively that we might miss it if we’re not pressing into God when it comes lurking.

But here is what I know. We were created to breathe love, not fear. God doesn’t offer us a spirit of fear at all. He offers us life-giving, life-saving breath. Just like that rush of cold air in the middle of the night, just like that feeling of walking past those ER doors and closer to help, the breath of life offered to us is just beyond a threshold. We make choices in our thoughts, in our conversations, in our prayer lives, that dictate how close or far away that relief might feel.

There are millions…billions of people in the world right now who are holding their breath. Or they are taking in shallow air because they don’t know how their next breath is going to come. They are broken, grieving, worrying, lost, homeless, displaced, ill, alone, confused, enslaved. And they are men and women and children, all made by a Creator who loves them and grieves with them–who wants to meet them in their places of pain and offer them life-rescuing breath.

Sometimes it is our task to be the hands and feet that usher this new breath into life. Sometimes this breath comes through prayer, but more often than not, I think it also comes with a desire to help and the call to pursue tangible ways of offering Christ’s love to our brothers and sisters.

The globe is so divided at this moment about what “help” should look like. I think we’ve made this so much more complicated than it needs to be. We are called to breathe love and not to feed fear. When we ask God how we should respond to others, we must check our spirits and ask whether we’re operating from a position of fear or freedom. If we truly believe that God know our days, our breath, our hearts, than we must trust him with them, too.

In another season when shallow breathing could easily become my M.O., I have to get on my knees again and ask for air. I have to ask God to carry me over that threshold, to meet me on my mat. And I have to steal oxygen away from fear and put it in it’s rightful place–deep in my lungs, where the Creator of the Universe has offered me–has offered all of us, breath.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. This is how we begin. I pray we are all able to find and to offer deep, deep breath to ourselves, to strangers, and to one another in the days to come.

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For a little more encouragement, I have loved the following over this past week. I hope these links bring lightness to your soul:

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Affiliate links used in this post.