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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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On the Rocks

May 16 17 Comments

The evening shadows are deepening around me, the sky spinning blue into gold as we make our final lap around the dog park. The early spring air is rapidly losing warmth as the sun dips lower, and I’m desperate to stay in the light, to be led and warmed by the day’s final rays.

Selah starts to get antsy in her stroller, her cries making it clear that she wants to get out and walk. We have a lot of ground to cover before we’re back at the car, and I don’t love waiting for her little legs to keep up. But I know she will keep crying if I continue on with her strapped into the stroller, so once we’re away from other dogs, I unbuckle her and let her down.

Not more than two steps later, Selah crouches to pick up a rock. She is constantly collecting little treasures in her hands, and rocks are her favorite of all. She likes to study each one intently, turning it over in her fingers, pressing its sharp edges against her baby-soft skin.

She picks up one and then two and then three, and as she reaches to pick up a fourth, I think She can’t possibly hold another one. But then she manages to do it—she gets her tiny hands around a fourth and a fifth stone, and then she jams a sixth pebble into a tiny gap.

Soon both of her hands are filled with rocks, more than I would have guessed she could possibly hold. Satisfied for the moment, she continues walking. She’s breathing excitedly, relishing her independence and beaming with pride over the work she’s done.

A few seconds later, she stops to pick up yet another stone, not unlike the ones she’s already holding. As she tries to fit just this one more, they all come tumbling down, lost in the sea of millions of other rocks on the crushed-gravel path.

Dan and I wait a few minutes as she attempts to collect them again, but she can’t find them all, and even if she could, they wouldn’t fit back together in the same way. We try to cajole her to move on, but she won’t be deterred. She wants every single one of those rocks she lost, each one a precious treasure. Eventually I distract her so we can continue, but then she stops again a few paces later to do the same thing: She tries to pick up just one more rock, again. They all tumble out, again. We wait for her, again. This repeats endlessly—after a few content steps, she takes her eyes off the view and tries to cram more stuff into her dusty hands.

***

As I turn this memory over in my mind, studying it, pressing into its edges, I realize it’s possibly the most important spiritual lesson I’ve ever learned.

I’ve been picking up rock after rock after rock throughout my church journey. My faith, which started out as Jesus, just give me Jesus, has become Jesus, plus Evangelicalism, plus quiet times, plus checklists, plus small groups, plus self-righteousness, plus piety and purity and politics.

Well-meaning people have told me that Jesus plus anything is not the true gospel, but all the while, they have shoved more rocks into my hands without giving me a chance to study them, really grasp them, and now I can’t carry them all. I can’t squeeze in even one more pebble. So I’m opening my hands and dropping all the rocks, letting every last one fall to the ground, and I’m running in search of the Rock, the Living Christ.

I’m not looking down for more rocks to pick up, and instead I’m looking ahead to the horizon, to the sun, to the Kingdom that Jesus is actually establishing on earth as it is in heaven. I’m whispering Your Kingdom come over and over with every step, with every breath. I’m longing for Communion with every crunch, crunch of the gravel under my feet.

I don’t totally understand Jesus’ vision for the Kingdom and how to bring it about, but I do know I’d pick his vision over man’s every single time. What if his vision for the Kingdom is far greater than the American church’s vision for our government? What if his vision is infinitely better than the one we’ve constructed for ourselves? What if, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, we’ve been collecting rocks to top off our mud pies, but all this time we’ve been missing out on the sand, the sunshine, and the sea?

What if all we need to do is hold out our dusty, empty hands?

What if #Jesus' vision for the kingdom is infinitely better than the one we’ve constructed for ourselves? Click To Tweet What if all we need to do is hold our dusty, empty hands out to God? Click To Tweet

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Filed Under: Faith Tagged With: adventure, Creation, doubt, experiences, faith, freedom, God, Jesus

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spi We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spiritual, and emotional season of waiting. A nonexhaustive list: Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for the pandemic to relent. Waiting for test results. Waiting to hug and kiss and hold the hands of our loved ones. Waiting for children. Waiting with children. Waiting on children. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the birth of Christ. Waiting for the birth of a child. Waiting for a new revelation. Waiting for 2021. Waiting for January 20. Waiting for justice. Waiting for movement. Waiting for stillness. Waiting to be seen. Waiting to fade away. Waiting with hope. Waiting with heartache. Waiting with anticipation.

Whatever you are waiting on today, may this prayer be a companion and encouragement to stay the course. You are not alone. We wait with you. 🌈
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