This Season of Waiting

Full disclosure, I’ve gone back and forth on sharing this, due to its personal nature, but I’ve also come to realize that this is an experience shared by so many and that’s it’s nothing to hide.

I’ve always been a fairly content person. As a child, I was never in any rush to grow up. I loved the simplicity and wonder of life as a child — having tea parties with my dolls and romping around outdoors with my brother. Even the occasionally oppressive presence of teenage angst didn’t have me rushing on to what was next. As a young adult, I was very comfortable being single and loved my life at the time. I didn’t particularly idealize the “next stage” in life and simply enjoyed the moment I was in. I mean, like anyone I’d look forward to tangible plans - like when I moving to England, or once I was engaged, getting married. Then, this summer, my husband and I decided we wanted to start our family. My mind filled with images of our future little one. I could see Austin reading to our child, and I could feel what it would be like to hold them in my arms. Yet, for all our planning and desire, with each passing month, there is no pregnancy. There is only waiting and longing. You can imagine, as someone who has generally lived in the moment, how strange it feels to now find myself in the position of being stuck, waiting on a future that I have little control over bringing about. As I wrestle with the complicated cycles of hope and grief, I’m looking to find peace, and perhaps this month can provide the peace I’ve been seeking.

This Sunday marked the start of Advent, the beginning of the church year, and the season marking the waiting for the Messiah. We long for the Messiah’s coming at the Resurrection of Heaven and Earth, we anticipate the Messiah coming into our hearts, and we wait the Messiah’s coming as a baby, wrapped in cloth, in the arms of his maiden mother. It’s in this ancient season of waiting that I’m turning to for my own peace, as I wait on the coming, someday, of my own child.

Each week of Advent traditional follows a different theme and a focus on a different way that Christ comes to us. The first week follows the hope for the “Second Coming,” the Resurrection when even Heaven and Earth shall be made new. The second week draws from the Old Testament prophets and the promise for the “First Coming,” for the Messiah prophesied to the Jewish people. The third week tells the hope of the “Third Coming,” the coming of Christ to each of us personally. Finally, the fourth Sunday of Advent dwells on the Incarnation and points ahead to the Christmas story. Together, they tell the story of waiting, of resting in God’s faithfulness, across time. It’s a story of both individual faith and collective faith. It makes my measly five months of waiting seem petty. And yet, for me, at times those five months feel like an age. Still, in these stories of anticipation, I see the promise of God’s faithfulness to His people, that they are never forgotten.

I find more than humility in the story of Advent. I also find a peace in the knowledge that my struggle and desire is seen and known by God. “‘My times are in your hands.’ Psalm 31:15 Every time, rightly understood, is immediate to God, and God wants us to be fully what we are,” German theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer reminds us in his book on Advent, “God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas.” Even as the months go by, my waiting isn’t solitary — my time is in His hands. My life continues on, filled with examples of God’s love and glory in my life - in my family, in my friends, in the world around me, in the love that I’m so very blessed with each and every day. This reflection of Bonhoeffer reminds me that while waiting on a future is deeply ingrained into the Christian mindset, it shouldn’t prevent me from living my life and loving the moment that I am in. My waiting is seen and known to God, but each moment of life is a gift — and in recognizing that, I turn from waiting in anxiety to resting in my anticipation. It’s a counterintuitive thing, as I eagerly anticipate a future whose arrival I have no knowledge of, to find peace in releasing my control over time. At least, I find peace in the attempt. As Austin can attest, there are days where the five months we’ve been trying seems like an age, and serene is the last way I’d describe myself feeling. The point, though, for me anyway, is to try.

As isolating as this season of waiting is, I’ve been so blessed to be able to share it with some truly wonderful women. Friends who are mothers, mothers-to-be, and hopefully someday mothers who all personally know the feelings that I grapple with. In conversations, text messages, and Snapchats, we update each other on our lives, on the ups and downs of this season, and I find a peace in that connection. I’ve received truly thoughtful insights and advice from my mother, my mother-in-law, and my doctor. Most commonly, the advice is to wait. And, of course, Austin each and every day is a blessing — he somehow manages to balance his wondrous hopes for our future family with a grounded peace in the moment and invites me to share in both his hope and his peace. Altogether, these friends and mothers, my husband and my doctor, all my anchors, gently remind me that often this process takes time, and there is no shame in that.

The most striking parallel for me between my own desire and this ancient season of anticipation is the most obvious. In this season of Advent, we wait on the coming of a baby born to set us free, to change life as we would know it. And as we anticipate that Holy Child, I sit and anticipate a future with my own child that will change my life. And even though this child doesn’t exist yet, not even in the most basic building blocks, cellular form, as I anticipate it, I already love it. I love it enough to rest in this season of waiting.

For all my seeming serenity up to this point, as a child, as soon as November hit, I would be struck with intense anticipation for the Christmas season. As an adult, that hasn’t changed a bit. This Advent, though, hits just a bit differently. This season of waiting on a Messiah, on Emmanuel in the form of a child, touches me in a way I never expected. Most of all, they remind me of the constant promise of God, that He is not finished acting, even at the same time as His salvific work is complete.

Christ is knocking. It’s still not Christmas, but it’s also still not the great last Advent, the last coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate runs the longing for the last Advent, when the word will be: “See, I am making all things new.” — Deitrich Bonhoeffer

So I also await the coming of God among us, the coming of Christ as a Child, and the coming of Christ, when all wars shall cease and all sorrow shall be no more, when the world itself is renewed and whole. For He, Jesus, is my peace.