The Advent Retreat is a Teenager.

I met Melanie Leach when the main way you listened to music was on a cassette tape! She worked at a christian bookstore across the street from the church I worked at. I was a music junkie, wanting to know the instant that DC Talk's new cassette was coming out. Melanie knew her music and she would always give me the inside scoop about what was happening and asking if I had listened to this group or that group.

And then Melanie met my wife Lea. You can't know how God will use someone in your life. That takes time.

Melanie's husband worked at a Christian camp in the area. One year he inquired about whether Lea and Melanie would ever consider leading a retreat for women at the camp. Hmmmm. An Advent Retreat was born.

Quietly, slowly, mysteriously, Lea and Melanie began to have a vision for women from the area to have a spot and time to pause at the beginning of Advent to consider their hearts in waiting for the arrival of Jesus Christ at Christmas, born anew in their hearts again and again. An intentional pause to combat being flailed about by the consumer, Christmas machine. That vision was for women and their families. That vision was for the two of them and their families.

The Advent retreat that Melanie and Lea share each year is now a teenager. This past weekend was the 15th year. That's part of why I am writing this today. It's not to draw prideful attention to their human accomplishment. It is to say that as one of the husbands of these two women, that their obedience to God over the last 15 years has deeply impacted me. I told Lea this past weekend as she returned home from the weekend that I don't really know exactly what happens at this retreat each year. I am never there in person. It is something that God has uniquely called her and Melanie and precious female hearts to over all these years. It is simply mine to tend Lea's heart and pray for and wonder about and watch how it has changed these two women. Even though I have never been on this Advent Retreat, it has affected the last 15 seasons of Advent in my heart in a holy way.

Eugene Peterson wrote, "Two convictions have undergirded my pastoral work. The first conviction was that everything in the gospel is livable and that my pastoral task was to get it lived. It was not enough that I announce the gospel, explain it or whip up enthusiasm for it. I wanted it lived, lived in detail, lived on the streets and on the job, lived in the bedrooms and kitchens, lived through cancer and divorce, lived with children and in marriage. Along the way I found that this also meant living it myself, which turned out to be a far more formidable assignment. I realized that this was going to take some time. I settled in for the long haul. That's where the phrase 'a long obedience in the same direction' embedded itself into my imagination."

Living in Advent over the long haul.

The obedience of these two women over the 15 year long haul has impacted my living.

Their pointing towards Jesus whispering in Advent over the 15 year long haul has impacted my waiting.

The watching and waiting for Jesus to be born in me anew over the long haul is impacting my longing.

I told Lea this weekend, "I hope you and Melanie are leading an Advent Retreat when you're 85."

Why?

There's more.