In my weekly newsletter on the intersection of faith and mental illness, Biblia Luna, I wrote this on December 3: “At Scholtes-Blog, I’m planning to do an Advent blogging challenge. I want to post something every day, where I saw a sign of God’s light that day. Advent starts today, December 3, and goes until December 24. We’ll see if I can meet this challenge!”

This will be my last entry in this series. Tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday of Advent, but by evening it’s Christmas Eve, and as a pastor, I’ve got a few responsibilities tomorrow. I’m tired just thinking about it! So I think I’ll just let this be the end. It’s been an interesting journey. I’ve found God’s light through music, through my children, through nature, through moments when I felt good for no apparent reason. For three weeks, I’ve been seeing glimpses of God’s light.

And I’ve also found myself feeling, in general, better than I had for a while. I think there are at least two reasons for this. For one thing, this has been a variation on writing a gratitude journal. Many people have told me over the years that gratitude is an important factor in mental health. Spending every day in Advent this year noticing things that I’m grateful for has given me some evidence that they’re right. The other reason I think I’ve been feeling better is that I’ve been consistently writing for the first time in quite a while. Every day for three weeks, with one exception (oops), I’ve made the time to write. And writing is so good for me.

I remember years ago talking with my counselor about writing – it was around the time when I was trying to find a publisher for Darkwater, and I found myself very frustrated and impatient. I talked that day about the difference between an author and a writer. I said that an author is someone who has published something (at that point I had not yet done so), but a writer is someone who writes. I identified myself that day as a writer. Whatever happened with publishing my manuscript, I was still a writer. And a writer writes. That sentence has stuck with me since that day: “A writer writes.” And isn’t it funny how I can find myself feeling better, feeling less tired, feeling in general just a little more stable, when I’m writing regularly?

It hasn’t been a perfect month. I’ve had moments that have been rough, hours here and there where my depression was pretty powerful. But they haven’t lingered. On average, my mood has definitely been better this month than usual. Writing and gratitude. Seems to me that gratitude is something that would be good for everyone, but maybe not writing – that might be specifically for me (and others like me) because that’s the place my creativity comes out, and that’s a part of what I think my calling is. So what would be a more general suggestion? Maybe creativity and gratitude. Maybe following your passion and gratitude. I don’t know. What do you all think?

But it’s been a good journey. I’m going to take a break from writing for a few days. During the week between Christmas and New Years, I plan to do some work on my website, maybe change the theme and the page structure. I also plan to publicize the fact that I was recently featured in the San Francisco Examiner. (Whoops! Guess I just started publicizing it there…) I want to take some time to ponder what to do creatively with labyrinths – a podcast? A book? Something else? But I want to get back to daily writing soon.

Oh, so where did I see God’s light today? My cats are awesome. My kids are awesome. My wife is awesome. They are definitely gifts from God.

That’s where I saw the light of God today, the third Saturday of Advent.

Image by brisch27 from Pixabay