Gaudete
Joy is sometimes a lot of work. And it won’t cure fevers. It won’t pay for car repairs.
Brigid O’Donnell
In Catholic tradition, each of the four the weeks leading to Christmas—Advent— marks a quality observers pray for more of in this wintry world: hope, peace, joy and love. I’m not much of a Catholic these days, but I always observe Advent. Religion isn’t a prerequisite when it comes to hope, peace, joy and love.
I am currently curled on the couch with my smallest child. We have been awake together since 3:45 a.m. After three days of struggling to breathe his way through RSV, he is now in the fever stage and crying like a newborn, barely comforted in my arms, falling asleep in fits and starts.
He caught the illness from his older brothers, both of whom traded fevers and vomiting for the first two weeks of Advent: the weeks of hope and peace. We made multiple trips to the doctor and have three different prescriptions for antibiotics in our refrigerator. The coughing from our kids’ rooms at nighttime is laughable, when we look at it objectively. And thank heavens for contract work because there have been zero days in December without at least one small child home from school or daycare.
And so this is Christmas. Not days spent exploring shops downtown for little gifts but days spent washing sheets and hauling toddlers to urgent care. Not evenings spent wrapping gifts by the fire with a glass of red wine, but evenings spent holding a breathing mask to the baby’s face with one arm, stroking the three-year-old’s fevered forehead with the other, my husband’s arms similarly occupied with the other two children and their freely flowing boogers.
This past Sunday was Gaudete Sunday.
Gaudete, I read, means “rejoice,” and Gaudete Sunday kicks off the third week of Advent: the week of Joy.
It was also the day my, my husband’s, and my daughter’s throats all started to hurt. We’ve been readying ourselves for it as the youngest three cough and snot their way through the season, so we are taking our own descent into illness rather stoically.
Three weeks ago, we lit the first Advent candle with a pang, a weak light for Hope in a country where leaders talk about immigrants as “poisoning the blood.”
Two weeks ago, we lit the second Advent candle with misgivings, a weak light for Peace in a world both creating and mourning Israeli and Gazan orphans.
This past Sunday, we lit the Gaudete candle, a weak light for Joy in our overwhelmed family.
A funny thing: the light of all three candles together was actually quite bright. In a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll add the fourth candle, Love, and the wreath’s light will fill the room.
Early during this week of Gaudete, the car’s check engine light came on. Already deep in the Christmas credit card chasm, we hauled all the kids to the car dealership to get it checked out.
“It’ll be fun!” we told the cranky, sick kids. “We’ll sing Christmas carols!”
We did. And it was.
A day later, I left the sick babies with my on-his-way-to-sick husband, and took my daughter to Lowe’s to buy a Christmas tree. We had planned to get a tree much earlier in the month, but sickness kept derailing us.
So we finally went, dammit. There were four trees left. My daughter and I laughingly picked one and brought it home. My husband and I started a fire in our fireplace (and sat our shivering toddler beside it wrapped in blankets), put Christmas carols on the speakers (full volume to be heard over the noise of the baby’s nebulizer) and let our coughing five- and seven-year-olds put up the non-breakable ornaments.
It took a lot of work, but even the fevered toddler smiled a bit through cloudy eyes.
Joy is sometimes a lot of work. And it won’t cure fevers. It won’t pay for car repairs.
Still.
Whether it’s parenthood, or adulthood, or my love-from-afar relationship with Catholicism, I’ve come to better understand Advent.
It’s not about letting the warm fuzzies of hope, peace, joy, and love come to us. It’s about searching for, fighting for, and creating them.
Advent leads us directly to the darkest day of the year and then commands us to rejoice. Christmas takes place in the bleakest season and asks us to worship at broken mangers; to light candles even when, singly, the light is paltry.
Of course I miss my childlike experience of Advent, when the season simply felt merry. I am happy to see my own kids experience that same passive joy. But I appreciate what Advent means now, too. Hope, peace, joy and love aren’t passive; they are a commitment.
As our kids bicker and cough, as we absorb horrifying news headlines, as we fret about wrapping and traffic and money, as the days grow dark and cold …
Rejoice.
