Hey blog! Happy December 1st to all who celebrate!
Growing up, December 1st was the day my family would bring down Christmas decorations from the attic. The house would suddenly transform from having scarecrows and cornucopias laying around to having a Christmas tree, stockings, and a nativity scene on the mantle. Living in Texas, this was the biggest marking of the transition from Fall to Winter. But this year, I saw snow on December 1st.
YOU’RE JOKING.
Maybe this feels like a random thing to include in my blog about November, but honestly it felt magical to me. Is that dramatic? Absolutely. But when I think back on November, I remember dramatic belly laughs & jumping up and down with sheer excitement & being silly just to be silly & oh how known I've felt this month! Truly, these moments have the same magical feeling as seeing snow today!!
November was an adventurous month. We went to DC! And Nicaragua! And saw friends & family for Thanksgiving! It was exciting! confusing! beautiful! emotional!
Simultaneously, I’m reading a book called “Silence” about Jesuit missionaries who go to rural Japan and face intense persecution. Throughout the book, there is a theme of God’s silence in the lives of so many faithful believers. In the part of the book I’m at, the main character (a priest) has just been captured by Japanese officials and is awaiting imminent suffering and death unless he aposticizes. The priest reflects on the countless lives of missionaries and Christians who have faced martyrdom before him, and the decades it has seemed God has turned his face from this land. In his own life, He can’t remember the last time he heard the Lord speak to him. After a lifetime devoted to learning about God, he now finds himself wondering if God even exists.
I haven’t finished the book yet. I can’t tell you what conclusion, if any, the priest reaches, or what his fate will be. But my overview of November wouldn’t be complete without an homage to the unanswered questions I’ve had this month. So here is my homage. I don’t know all that I wish I knew, and often that feels like silence from the Lord. Maybe it is. Maybe I’m just not listening.
If I was more poetic, I would tie this all together with a list of all the moments that literally made me bounce up and down with uncontained joy from the feeling of being seen, known, and cared for by the people who make Raleigh home in the midst of confusion and heaviness, and you guys would walk away teary-eyed and thankful for the people in your own lives in a new way. Unfortunately, I’m not poetic, and my list wouldn’t mean much to you. (Don’t worry, I still wrote my list, just in a different place.)
What I will say is that I’m deeply thankful to be at Apostles. It has been so neat to experience faith in a new way than I grew up with. To have the freedom to just be. To know leaders like Eric and Ashley and Sam and Chris who have taught me so much just from the way they live. I am forever grateful!!
Until next month,
Celeste
(Okay also the Aggies played TU yesterday for the first time in 13 years. I got to watch with my dearest Aggie friends in Knoxville, and GUYS being able to sing “saw varsity’s horns off” HITS DIFFERENT when we’re actually playing tu!!! Talk about screaming and jumping up and down!! GIG EM AND HORNS DOWN FOREVERRRR)