The inner reality of redemption is that it creates all the time. Oswald Chambers

The year we left New York, The Husband and I (then, he was The Fiance) made a bucket list of things to do before we abandoned the city. On that list was Niagara Falls. So over Valentine’s weekend, we boarded a flight to Buffalo and headed to the site of Jim and Pam’s wedding.

Dear God in heaven. Have you ever been to the clusterf*ck that is Niagara Falls? As one of the colleagues of The Sis put it: “Who let this happen?” More specifically, who saw a glorious wonder of nature and responded, “We should put a state fair RIGHT NEXT TO THIS.” TH and I dropped our bags off at the Sheraton and walked around the “town” to find it littered with Tom Horton’s, Rainforest Cafe, and carnival side shows. We found Niagara on the Lake to be more our speed, what with its absence of people and presence of wineries, but our last night there, TH and I did venture into a haunted house (they are plentiful at the Falls).

TH is a haunted house buff, and this place was listed as the scariest in the vicinity. So I stifled my urge to drive back to winery land and walked beside him into the unknown. About halfway through our adventure, we found ourselves stepping into total darkness. Pitch black. After a few seconds, and some pawing at the walls, we realized that the horror of this section of the house was that we had been unwittingly enclosed into a tiny room with no exit. TH marveled: “This is so awesome!” I screamed: “I HATE THIS!” Eventually, we made it out.

This past year has felt, at times, like a walk back into that room.

My ledger of thankfulness sits on the table next to the Christmas tree, and what keeps it from being a Pollyanna-esque exercise in futility? Thoroughness. There is “beautiful sunrise” listed right next to “another negative pee stick?” because this is what separates gratitude from phoniness, men from boys, truth from fiction. It’s giving thanks in everything, even when a question mark must be added because this part of everything sucks and I don’t see the good in it yet. “Surgery?” “Another rough night?” “Rejection email?” From that question mark hang my frustration and hope, their habitual coexistence, and in the deepest part of its curve lies truth.

One day, the question mark will disappear. But probably not today.

Today, every prenatal vitamin and page written can feel like a joke…or an act of faith. I can give in to feeling like an idiot, or I can raise the rebel flag in the middle of the territory marked “foolishness” by the world, because here’s the thing: most of the world just doesn’t know. My pills and pages may be my way of showing up to a barn and expecting God to arrive as a baby.

In a mundane moment, as we hold The Kid down and force ointment into his eyes to resolve pink eye, I remember similar, less mundane times in the hospital, with needles instead of ointment, but the same narration: “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but right now I am loving you.” My heart is a few seconds slower than my ears, but eventually I get it–and I wonder how many times it has been whispered, deep calling to deep, to me.

And I realize now that we are not back in that dark, doorless room. Because everywhere, all around, there are tiny cracks, and I thought they were just the beginnings of my falling apart, but this is what they are for: they are letting light through.

“Gifts always come out of the unseen and hidden places.”

TH and I ventured into the unknown together, promises made on a beach bathed in sunlight, and landed here in our story, where the light has a way of changing from time to time. And as I feel my way around, as I write everything down, the patches of light coalesce and I begin to see that we are inside a chamber of the very heart of grace. And we are being led around, given a tour, because this is what Advent is: finding a home in the waiting. Finding love in the not-knowing. Advent is what makes up our days. But at the end of them all? One day, when the light has all but disappeared and everything has gone still, a cry pierces the night, and all the pieces come together to make us whole.