Making Room for What Wants to Arrive

Hi friends,

As we move deeper into the season of Advent, I’ve been thinking again about the difference in the posture of our lives when we welcome what’s trying to arrive… instead of demanding that we make everything happen on our own.

Advent, at its heart, is a reminder that—whether we’re ready or not—Love is asking to be welcomed into our lives. And if we’re paying attention, we notice something else: Love rarely shows up tidy. It comes the way it did the first time—messy, mysterious, surprising.

Maybe you’re waiting for Love to show up in a new way this season. Advent teaches us that sometimes Love arrives in the dark nights of our lives, in the places we’d rather avoid, in the moments we least expect. And when it does, if we can allow ourselves to nurture it—to make room for it—it may teach us everything we’ve been trying so hard to figure out on our own.

For me, Christmas is the great announcement that Love is always seeking to be born within us. We often think it has to be produced or performed—born out of our lives. But the truth is simpler and more gracious: if we’re willing to receive it, Love does its own work in us. And once it’s in us, the outflow tends to take care of itself.

So Merry Christmas to you and yours. And know this: whatever you are truly longing for—if it is honest, loving, real, and rooted in what’s good—the Divine may very well be longing for that same thing not only with you, but also within you.

The great announcement of Advent is that sometimes, Love just wants to be held.

With grace,

Ashton