“Am I the Grinch?” if I feel like I didn’t sign up for this? That life is messy, I’m frustrated, and I don’t quite know how to proceed?
Scripture: Luke 1:29
“Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.”
So… let me tell you what kicked off my Advent season this year.
I was checking my email, minding my own business, when I saw a charge on my credit card for an app subscription.
But I did not remember downloading it.
Or using it.
Or… honestly… even knowing it existed.
So, to try to figure out what it was, I opened the app — and oh my gosh.
It was a voice makeover app… and a photo filter app.
Apparently, at some point in 2023, I decided I needed help sounding like a Pixar character.
And then forgot about the entire thing.
Once I opened it, I started playing around with it — and did you know you can do EVERYTHING in these apps now?
- Raise your cheekbones
- Straighten and whiten your teeth
- Remove wrinkles
- Change your jawline and waistline
- Brighten your eyes
- And basically turn yourself into the 2025 version of a Kardashian or Jonathan Bailey.
You can filter yourself so much that even you don’t recognize yourself anymore.
And here’s the part that hit me (after I finished laughing and my adjusting my new cheekbones) . . .
Sometimes I want to do that with my life, too.
Filter it. Smooth it out. Remove the parts I don’t like.
Present the “ivory nativity figurine” version — the one where everything looks peaceful and put-together and holy.
But the real story?
The one under the filter?
That’s the messy one we are all actually living.
And that is exactly where Advent begins.
Mary wasn’t standing there glowing like a Renaissance painting.
She wasn’t posed in soft light with perfect hair and angelic calm.
Luke tells us she was “greatly troubled.”
The Greek there? It’s intense.
It’s “my stomach dropped and I don’t know whether to breathe or run” kind of troubled.
Advent doesn’t start with “Silent Night” (or end with it either, for that matter).
It starts with:
“Wait… what is happening right now?”
Mary reacts like any of us do when the script blows up.
When life hands us something we didn’t ask for, didn’t want, and definitely didn’t sign up for.
And here’s what is so powerful . . .
God doesn’t wait for Mary to filter anything.
God doesn’t clean up the lighting or adjust her emotional tone.
God meets her in the unfiltered moment.
Maybe that’s true for us too.
Maybe what God wants from us this Advent isn’t the smoothed-out, wrinkle-free version of our souls…
but the no-filter, confused, honest, “this is where I actually am” version.
Because that’s the one God can work with.
Reflection
Where has your life felt “unfiltered” this year — messy, confusing, unpolished, or just plain not what you wanted it to be?
Where have you thought,
“This is not what I signed up for”?
Practice
Take 5 minutes today and write a literal No-Filter List.
Everything that feels broken, confusing, disappointing, or unexpected.
Then pray — simply, honestly:
“God, here’s the unfiltered version of my life.
Be with me here — not where I wish I were,
but where I actually am.”
That’s where Advent truly begins.
Not in the perfect image…
but in the unedited story God is already in.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea