After the lost week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many people are bustling about, having put all the pressure of “New Year, New You” into a whirlwind of gym memberships and eating salad in the winter when we just want soup and bread. This is the year it’s really going to stick! What’s sticking around here right now is snow.
I live in Indiana, and we got a lot of snow this past week while the state I grew up in is on fire, with so many losing lives, livelihoods, and homes. My son in Florida is calling me to complain about the cold. My friends in Arkansas and Mississippi are sending me memes about how my weather is lost and to come get it.
Lost. That’s a word we don’t like. It’s hard enough when the keys are lost, but St. Anthony will help you find them. What if it’s bigger than that? What if what feels lost is you? Lost in your work, lost in your relationships, lost in your motherhood, lost in growing up or growing old.
We cling to the verses about the Good Shepherd leaving the 99 to find the one lost sheep, the woman and her lost coin, or the son who was lost and is returned. I’m not downplaying the power of Luke 15 to comfort us, to tell us truth, to help us know it will all be found again. But between the lost and the found is the hidden.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The years between Jesus’s birth and the beginning of His ministry are sometimes called the “Lost Years” by scholars. The Catholic Church calls them the “Hidden Years.” Somehow this little word difference changes everything. The Holy Family was not lost in Egypt; they were hidden. The stories of Jesus’ young childhood aren’t a disappearance but a hiddenness. And what a gift that hiddenness is to us.
Because in the unknown, we can meditate on the life of the Holy Family as it looks in our lives. What was life like in Egypt? Did St. Joseph find carpentry work, or did he have to do something else? Did Mary make friends with the other women around them, or did she feel the loneliness of moving away from home? What was it like moving home again to their own city? Was it a “can’t go home again” or a true homecoming?
Did Mary ever feel lost in the laundry? I mean they didn’t have Huggies or Maytag back then! Did other little boys invite the Child Jesus to play with them? Did people ever move on from the scandal of Jesus’ birth? When did St. Joseph die? What were the joys and sorrows and everyday moments in their hidden life? I wonder if Mary hid all these things in her heart, too, pulling them out to remember after Jesus’s Ascension, like the gifts of the Magi and the Annunciation?
Meditating on the “Hidden Years” of the life of the Holy Family brings great comfort to me. I wish I had seen the difference between lost and hidden in the years when my children were young, and I felt unseen and lost. Our times of hiddenness are times for growth and preparation. Scripture shows us this, too.
All those years went by in two simple verses: “And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him,” (Luke 2:39-40).
Brandi Skidmore, now of Indiana, is the former vice president of the Ladies Altar Society at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church at Lake Village, Ark.
Editor’s note: Pastors, ministers or other writers interested in writing for this section may submit articles for consideration to shope@adgnewsroom.com. Writers should have connections to Southeast Arkansas. Please include your name, phone number and the name and location of your church or ministry.