Advent, Fog, and Beauty in the Unknown
There’s something about fog, how it distorts and changes the world from a familiar place to something foreign, how it covers and shapes a landscape.
Last September, I took a trip to the Colorado mountains. Every morning, a layer of fog covered the valley below during the threshold between night and morning. And before the birds even started to chirp, I would drag M out of bed and push him out the door. Together, we chased the dawn.
Of course, we know mist evades capture like a flirtatious mistress throws up her heels against an oncoming suitor. As we fought our way down the thickly wooded path, over a treacherous little creek hidden by wayward branches, we watched the haze dance before our eyes just out of reach. We clapped our hands to keep cold at bay, ignoring the numbing in our fingers and toes, teased by white puffs of mist issuing from our breath.
The fog surrounded us and the rest of the world faded.
We wandered the field as the sun painted streaks of light pink, and gold bathed the earth in new colour. Trees that had appeared ominous in the dark turned to beautiful shades of red and orange. Dewdrops clinging to leaves splintered the sun into a kaleidoscope of light.
I don’t know if I noticed the simple beauty of witnessing the first light of day at the time. The fog of grief still shrouded every corner of my mind. This trip was just another attempt to keep it from pulling me under.
I ran toward the rising of the sun.
At the end of October over a month later, I found out I was pregnant.
Again.
Unexpectedly.
Miraculously.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. We’d closed that door. But no matter. Just like all the others that came before, this one wouldn’t live long enough to make a difference in the trajectory of my life—the one that lay upon train tracks running parallel to the ocean.
Except she did.
Today, I write this as she sleeps in bed next to me. I feel her warmth against my legs, the rise and fall of her chest; I listen to her soft breath signaling life and health.
Every night before I join her in sleep, I whisper prayers over her, willing them into reality with each kiss I place on her forehead.
Live.
Know you are loved.
Be safe.
Know you are heard.
When fog rolled in one morning last week, my thoughts drifted back to those days in Colorado. We were there as the trees had just started to turn from green to yellow, filling the mountainsides with gold. I didn’t know yet how much my life was about to change. Everything in the distance was still blurred in that quiet, indistinct way.
And I guess, I guess the future is still just as blurry, even with the light coming in.
I often wonder what inner strength I possibly possess, or if I could face uncertainty with any measure of equanimity. There are layers of protection I’ve tried to weave beneath me through the years, but I know better than most how quickly the line between wanting to live and wanting to let go can erode.
Sometimes, the anchors I had thought were heavy enough to moor me to life failed. Sometimes, the waves were too big and too strong.
We’ve just entered the season of Advent, a reminder every year that the waiting is just as essential as the fulfillment. This Christmas is the third I will face without Ren, but the first I will have with El. Grief continues to weave itself through every joy; never more so than now.
I wait in that semicolon between “already” and “not yet.” There will come a day when light disperses all fog and brings the world into profound clarity.
But in the space between, I am still here, basking in an ethereal beauty of a known yet unknown world.