Advent Will Carry You, Christmas Will Find You

Yesterday I furiously packed my belongings so they would be ready for my drive from Chicago to Northern Minnesota today. It is anywhere from an 8-10 hour drive depending on the weather and my energy level. I made the decision to not go to church today. If I left at 7:30, I would hopefully get home just as it was getting dark. I didn't want to miss Advent 4, but I wanted to have a safe drive up north. Even if I passed by Advent 4 today, it somehow found me on I-90 and I-94. The wind gusts were nearing 45 miles per hour and there was near white out conditions. At the point that I had counted over 14 cars in the ditch in less than a few miles, I decided that northern minnesota would need to wait another day and I would check myself into a roadside retreat center, aka econolodge. I am grateful that I am safe and warm tonight in a hotel and my car survived this leg of the trip. I realize that Advent was handed to me on a platter today. I was forced to stay put, to wait to travel any further until Christmas Eve. I sit here with hope and gratitude for a little space to let the color return to my knuckles and to relax a bit.

There were a number of hotels just off the highway and I chose my lodging for the night based on the one that shared a parking lot with an eating establishment other than Mcdonalds or Taco Bell.

For dinner I went to the Hearty Platter for dinner. The waitress told me they never close. She acted as if was balmy and sunny outside. And so I sat with four days worth of the Chicago Tribune, catching up on quick pot roast recipes, stories of hope during the holidays, stories of Christmas's past, memorials and tributes to unsung heroes, and movie reviews for the upcoming week. I wasn't up for the turkey or meatloaf resting on two pieces of white bread and smothered in gravy. Instead I went for two eggs and hashbrowns, even though it was 5:30 at night. This waitress seemed more like my grandmother, inviting me in from the cold and making me food at her table than a woman in a burgundy hearty platter uniform. She told me that most places had closed for the evening. I realized then and there that she was like the inn keeper of long ago, who welcomed a young woman and man to take shelter for the night. In the midst of advent coming to me today in the need to stay put until the storm ends, I was being ushered ever closer to Christmas. There was room at the Inn and Hearty Platter tonight.

As I fall off to sleep tonight, more than dreaming of sugar plum fairies or whether I have been bad or good this year, I will be thinking about the way we are invited into Christmas, long before we think we are really ready for it. Long before all the decorations are on the tree and we have all arrived at our destination, (over the river and through the woods......to grandmother's house we go). I give thanks that the incarnation of hope and the divine finds me, even when I need to pull of the road.