“For you, I’ll wait…”
Last Advent, as folks bustled about decorating trees and buying gifts, as my students studied for finals and my colleagues prepared for the end of the semester, as the days became as dark and short as ever, I learned I was pregnant.
The news was unexpected and not exactly welcome. I was in a state of wild transition when I turned that warm, wet stick upside down in my hand and with it, my life.
I had known since my elementary catechesis that Advent means “coming,” but until my pregnancy, I had never felt close to this season and its attendant spiritual resonances: to “prepare the way,” “to wait in joyful hope.” Both pregnancy and Advent demand planning and patience. In the “now” and the “not yet” of these sister seasons, the waiting itself is sacred work.
“Til Kingdom Come” by Coldplay served as the soundtrack to those early weeks of pregnancy, those nascent weeks of waiting. The song had long evoked Advent for me — “for you, I’ll wait,” Chris Martin croons — and it took on a deeper meaning last December. I was waiting on Christmas, sure, and also, now, my son. I unpacked the lyrics anew: “I don’t know which way I’m going / I don’t know which way I’ve come.” I had uncertainty and angst in abundance — and also, the gift of a faith that invites me to place my hope in God, whose ways are greater than mine.
Over the next several months, in a profound experience of Ignatian detachment, I slowly began to slough off the detritus I once considered essential to the scaffolding of my life, debris I needed to dislodge to open my heart and self to the invitation to motherhood. My vanity collapsed beneath the weight of my ballooned belly. My addiction to work sobered. My career, my pride, my body could no longer serve as vehicles for my ego. The things of this world in which I had staked my worth were stripped away in this season: I had no choice but to loosen my grip on life as I had come to know it.
It was in this holy waiting that my soul was softened. God accompanied my gradual arrival as I awaited my son.
Now, I have a newborn. As we prepare for Christmas in all the popular ways, there’s a new stocking to hang upon the mantle. “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments dangle from the tree. This Advent, as the calendar turns on a year that upended all I knew, I’m praying with the practice of holy waiting, noticing anew where God meets us in expectation.
We wait on a God who waits for us.
