A Journal Entry from a sleepless night

Saturday, December 18th, 2021

3:02am in my kitchen:

I woke up choking on my own phlegm, and so now I'm awake in the kitchen, making tea to clear my throat, so I suppose it's a great time to finally journal. 

This week has been long. 

This year has been long. 

This decade has been long.

I keep repeating--aloud, to others, and to myself--that I am tired. But no one ever knows what I mean except me. In fact, even without the words, everyone just expects that my primary problem--and the logical primary solution--is that I need sleep or rest of some sort. Even my dear best friend has said/suggested it multiple times ("What are you doing to rest?" she asks). Mom and Dad keep repeating that I need more sleep as an antidote to whatever ails me; and anyone else who notices I seem more depressed, sadder, or just quieter, politely, kindly recommends 'rest' so that I "feel better". 

But no one understands the illness, so how can they presume to prescribe an antidote? The truth is that the kind of rest they're talking about isn't the kind of rest I need, because the 'tired' I feel is a deeper fatigue, not curable by unconsciousness or mere lying down. It's a tiredness of this world that dwells under a god of darkness. It's a fatigue of enduring strife and hard things; it's weariness of facing hurt and sadness and disappointment daily. It's a fatigue that makes me long for the real relief, the real rest of Revelation--the ultimate rest, the rest that is all at once sleep and peace and rejuvenation and renewal and return to relationship, the end to the need for perseverance and endurance and striving and resilience; all the things I realize I am empty of these days. 

That's what I mean by "tired"; it's the kind of exhaustion that can't be treated by its symptoms; it has to be fought off at its root, which is much deeper. I have no more endurance or resilience, and those are things you can't buy in the grocery store any more than you can find them in a few extra hours--or days--of sleep. Curing my cold won't cure the real illness beneath it, which is a virus not of this world. It's a spiritual illness, not a physical one, and it needs a spiritual treatment, not a medicinal one. 

I never really grasped the emotion or the weight and heaviness of advent until last year, and it continues to grow in me this year. In fact, growing up, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" was my very least favorite Christmas carol or hymn. It always seemed too slow, too heavy to me; it didn't possess the joy and exuberance of the other Christmas songs I learned in school or sang in the church choir, songs which were so much better suited to me. As a child, my default setting was always a naive form of joy. All the (occasional and rare) mean things other kids did to me mostly went over my head, as did, even, the fact that I was mostly ignored or invisible to my peers. I just skipped by in my own little happy world.

I think this decade has dealt the final shattering blow to that world. Last year, I was pushing through it on pure adrenaline; this year, my big girl pants have worn too many holes in too many places, and the adrenaline has passed, leaving behind only the weariness of staring into a future that doesn't seem to be bringing relief or respite from difficult things anytime soon. And I think I'm finally getting the actual sentiment of advent--a bittersweet mixture of lament and longing. 

Finally, I realize I'm sitting in wait for an eternal respite from all striving and hardship, and even just generalized sadness and melancholy. Respite which I know is coming someday; our world just has no idea when. 

Advent is that combination of past, present, and future--Israel's lament of exile from their homeland mingled with our lament of exile from the perfect world in relationship with God we've cast ourselves out of; Israel's longing for a king to dominate their enemies and bring them home merged with our longing for a king to defeat forever the darkness and brokenness of the world in which we dwell, a world that we deeply sense (whether we admit it or not) is somehow wrong in how nothing good ever lasts--not joy, not peace, not even life itself. 

Americans, especially, are loath to admit that death is a real thing, even just the small "deaths" we see in the loss of small things. For some reason, we're uncomfortable with lament as a concept because we are taught by our culture that our default setting should be "happy", and if it's not, there's something wrong with us. I know I've received this message a lot recently, most especially from my own family. "You're healthy; you're not in financial trouble; therefore, you must be thankful and happy!"

The problem with that philosophy is, of course, that it is blatantly ignoring all that is broken and hard and wrong in this world. Yes, thanksgiving for health and wealth is in order, but we cannot ignore that our world is wrought with the concept of death and loss. If really this is the native world we should belong to, all that's ever been, then endings, death, and loss shouldn't bother us at all. But they do. 

Why do death and loss--small and large, momentary and eternal--bother us? I think it's because deep down in our souls we sense that we don't belong here. We're not really supposed to know what endings feel like. We were meant for an eternal world of peace and the true joy of unending life and unbroken relationships. And I think this advent, I finally feel that deep sense of grief, and finally anticipate Christmas as it was meant to be anticipated—not for the temporary joy of family and food and gifts, but rather for the eternal, forever-enduring joy of God’s kingdom on earth with the Immanuel, the Jesus come to live forever WITH us.