Advent in Dakar

Last year, I remember appreciating the weeks of Advent a bit differently than I had before. It could very well have been the changes that come with getting a bit older and new years presenting chances to look at events in new ways. It could have also been my thought pattern last year.

I was feeling a bit stuck in something of a quarter-life crises - a phrase I had used a few times as a joke but I've been hearing it much more often from my generation lately. Not sure of what kind of sails I had, what kinds of winds there were, and how much that would change before I was supposed to start doing things like other grown-ups.

So what I really appreciated in a new way last year was the waiting. More than just the journey itself being the destination, I appreciated a different value being highlighted each week in preparation for good to come. We've got some pretty strong sails in love, peace, joy and hope.

So Advent has come back around again, and i didn't have the foggiest idea this time last year that I'd be spending these four Sundays in Dakar, Senegal. Once again though, I'm finding a chance to think about them in a new way.

I'm waiting to come home, but it's the type of waiting that we have to do for a lot of different types of things a lot of the time. I'm certain, beyond a reasonable doubt as they say, of getting home and what some things will be like. Just as certain as I am that I'll be graduating in May, eating dinner tonight or will have to get a new driver's license in January. I know what I'll have to do to get there and what that will mean when those days come.

But there's another type of waiting too that I enjoy about Advent. I've got a date set, but in going home, I'll be leaving another one that I've made here. And in some way, I'll be waiting to find out when I'll come back to my home in Dakar.

In waiting for Christmas, I know there is a great news of good to come. But what that goodness looks like has morphed over time for me. In waiting for this great good to arrive, the good things that I have already become brighter and clearer. That's what's great about Advent for me - each week, it's articulated "hey, we've got peace," or "you aren't so numb, we hope, that you can't be overcome by the joy from time to time." All of these other goods that we already have present with us gather together in new and stronger ways every year. And without exactly realizing it's happened, a great good is here with us too. Not a milestone, nor anything foreign really, more of an organic culmination. I'm finding this to be a charge of growing older, to seek out these hidden ways.

It's a flavor of uncertainty, chance, and surprise, something I'm thankful and tickled to be able to continue to find in life, and I look forward to waiting for more :)