Normally when we celebrate a feast in our house, it is a celebration. We plan a fun activity, read-aloud, meal or tea that cultivates a relationship with the particular saint honored that day and brings some aspect of his/her life to light. I hope to make the feasts of the church and the lives of those they celebrate relevant to my children and a part of the very fabric of our family life.
And until this year the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe was the same. We remembered the faces of our brothers and sisters in Mexico whom we had met on our mission trips there. We remembered the stories of the Mexican persecution. We prayed for the church in Mexico, and of course, ate Mexican food. We read the story of Juan Diego and the beautiful lady and her roses. We looked photos of the Basilica and the beautiful tilma Our Lady left us. We celebrated.
This year, the meaning of this feast has changed profoundly for me. In outward appearances, it has been much the same--a tiny statue on the table with roses beside it, fajitas and soft tacos for dinner, Tomie de Paola's version of the story read aloud.
But inwardly, I am in a different place, I am consumed by the memory of this day last year. The night that I stood in the waiting room of the Heart Hospital of Lafayette, my five-month pregnant belly obvious, cradling a newly turned one year old on my hip, and listened to a cardiologist tell me that my thirty-seven year old husband had just suffered a heart attack...and that he had placed a stint in the artery and that Greg was doing fine. My head went swimming, my eyes blinked back tears, my own heart wrenched. And my earth shook and my world tilted ever so slightly on its axis. This is not what I expected to be dealing with as we prepared for Christmas and awaited the birth of our fifth child. This was not supposed to happen to my health-conscious, athletic husband. This kind of suffering and anxiety were not ours to bear. But they were and they still are. And today, they are very real.
We have had a year of good health and no further medical problems. And a year of fear, doubt, questions, and struggles. We have dealt with the depression, the anxiety, and the suffering that comes of such an experience. And we have also welcomed a new life to our family and celebrated the lives we are all acutely grateful to have.
And so today, as I think of Juan Diego, who met Our Lady with her miraculous sign on the way to seek help for his sick Uncle, I find myself all the more devoted to him, who in his simplicity tried to hide from her so as not to disappoint her. And he who trusted her when she sent him on her mission and told him she would take care of his uncle. Today is a day to celebrate Our Lady, and a day when I fully face my very real fears and worries, when I stop trying to hide them from her, and instead I hand them to her and trust that she will take care of them. Today is a day when I fill the tilma of my soul with the roses of her heavenly embrace and embark on whatever errand she chooses for me (most likely to fill a sippy cup, change a diaper, or read a book). I let go of all that frightens me, worries me, distracts me, and fill my soul with her gentle love.
And I am grateful--grateful for her care and for the love of my heavenly Father, grateful for the reminder of life's fragility, and grateful for my robust, whole, in tact family, for my helpmate and best friend.
I remember last year in the days that followed Greg's heart attack telling my mother, "I feel like I'm walking around in a life that is three sizes too big for me." This advent, I feel pretty sure my Mother can relate. She probably felt much the same way as she sat waiting on that donkey while Joseph knocked and knocked....I am not alone in my fears and in my sufferings. And if God can use them to bring Christ present into the world somehow, I will suffer them willingly. And if they can bring me in contact with the face of the Christ Child, both now and for eternity, then I will definitely boast of "these momentary light afflictions." But this feast, this day, will never be quite the same for us again.
