Today it is exactly 5 months to the day that I will be married to the wonderful man who has captured my heart. I am obviously very excited to get married but I am trying to have a more meditative approach to the whole event. This week also marked another exciting adventure: Advent.
Advent is my favorite liturgical season by far. There is a stillness and a anticipation that no other season quite contains. I LOVE Advent and I look forward to it way more than any other celebration. However, there are moments when I also get impatient to open my presents and be done with Christmas carols. Overall, though, I find the season a renewing experience and I find Christmas much sweeter for all the prayers and meditation and waiting that were put into it.
I am trying to take the same approach to my wedding. I have 5 months of pre-matrimonial advent. I'm excited for the wedding but I'm also trying to treasure the moments of preparation and excitement for our lives coming together. Given, combining your lives is not always a fun experience and I find myself sometimes in an uncomfortable waiting place--waiting to be done with all the planning and unending details which require a decision, waiting for our united life to start, waiting, just waiting.
Advent means "coming." Jesus came and will come again into my heart in a new way on Christmas. My marriage is also "coming" or perhaps we are "becoming." I am becoming the woman I need to be for my marriage to be born into a world that is skeptical that a union like ours can work.
That is the gem of the entire experience of Advent. You are not the same person you were when you started the journey. I look forward to the transformation during this Advent and my own personal advent.
