I cannot believe that we are already into the third week of Advent! Looking back on the last week I can sense the growing anticipation in my heart and in my home. Christ’s coming seems a little closer, and even more needed. As the house starts to look more like Christmas — wreath and bows on the door, nativity on the mantle, the growing display of Christmas cards on the wall — I get the feeling of that same “nesting” taking place in my heart. I’m opening it up, airing it out, getting it clean and ready for His coming.

However, that is not a painless nor quick task. The beautiful, but difficult process of opening up my heart and getting it ready to celebrate the Savior’s birth bears some interesting similarities to the process I go through in getting my home ready for Christmas.

Going through the Christmas bins in the attic, I will usually find some unhappy surprises. Half of the strands of lights may have burned out or be missing bulbs. A heavy box of books that has been sitting for months on the small box marked “FRAGILE” may result in half the glass ornament balls for the tree as last year. Other treasures I thought I packed away so carefully and purposefully are nowhere to be found. Sound familiar to anyone? Probably. Most of us find that we have to do a little replenishing each year, as we open up boxes and find that the contents don’t match our memory of what we packed in them from the last.

In a similar process, I find that the Advent season creates the space and time for me to take inventory of my heart. Here too I find unhappy surprises. A light of hope that once shone bright may now be pretty dim. The weight of life’s problems and my own attachments to various vices may be crushing my joy. The peace-giving, charity-growing spiritual truths and disciplines that I once took great care to preserve may be scarcely found. In short, examining the state of my heart as Advent begins quickly leads me to the realization that it needs a lot of replenishing–a lot of restoration–to be ready for Christmas morning.

While this realization is sobering, God’s grace working with my will to ready my heart is a beautiful thing. Grace is there for the asking. By His grace I can see the dim corners of my heart fill with light. The heaviness of sin and sadness give way to weightless joy. I am becoming more filled with love, more at peace. Advent’s process of getting your heart ready for Christmas simply means that your heart is starting to look more like His. I’m glad Advent isn’t over yet, because mine needs more work.

I was at a store this week looking at one of those Christmas towels that has a bunch of words on it that should be associated with Christmas: “joy, peace, hope, love, etc.” It is sad how much the commercialization of these words has made them cliches printed on cheap home goods. I think many people have poor lived experiences of the true meaning of these words. They may be affixed to various pieces of Christmas decor in our homes, but do they exist in our hearts? Have we let these virtues that should be primary characteristics of the Christian life become hollow words? We have to open up our hearts and start unpacking to find the answers. But whatever the contents we find, God’s grace is there to begin the restoration and renew our hope, joy, peace, and love.

I didn’t grow up hearing very much about Advent in the Evangelical Protestant churches in which I was raised. It wasn’t part of our family traditions either. If you had asked me what it was, I would have guessed that it had something to do with purple candles and a calendar. I didn’t start celebrating Advent until after my husband and I became Catholic; but once I realized its significance and purpose, it transformed the way that I prepare my heart for the Christmas season.

At first, I just thought of it as a “count-down” to Christmas that started on December 1st: “24 days to go!” But as I started learning and practicing the Advent liturgy, I realized that it was so much more. It is the time of waiting for Christmas, of anticipating the birth of the long-awaited savior. We forget, as Christians in the 21st century, how long the Jews waited for their Messiah–how many generations carried on the anticipation that one day He would come. We live in an age where we don’t have to wait that long for anything. In fact, we take for granted that Christ was born; we think of it as an event in the past that we celebrate each year.

But it’s more than just remembering the long wait of Israel; for me and you today, it is the time for our realization of how much we need a savior. We are lost; we are broken; we are wandering, homeless like Israel. Only in Christ are we found, restored, and brought home to the waiting arms of the Father. This is why we celebrate Advent. It is not just a count down to Christmas; it is a time of preparation for Christmas. We remember the groaning and waiting of the world for the Messiah. We experience our own personal groaning at the realization of our own sinful states, and we search and wait for Christ to come into our lives and restore us. In the last two years since I have started celebrating Advent, I have woken up Christmas morning with more joy than ever before. He is here! My Messiah is born! He came for me, for the whole world, to make all things new.

Perhaps, like me, you have never celebrated Advent or did not grow up in a tradition where it was prominent. If so, I invite you to start celebrating it this year. There are a lot of ways to do this. You can join in the simple tradition of lighting a candle each week, and there are many beautiful devotions and prayers in both Protestant and Catholic traditions for this season. Over the next three weeks of Advent, I will reflect on ways that this time is meaningful to me and my family. I will also share some of the ways that we are learning to celebrate our waiting for the Messiah in our home.