Later in life, I learned much more about waiting during my five pregnancies. I figured out once that I spent almost four years of my life being pregnant! Swollen belly, swollen ankles, inexplicable life flipping around inside me - I felt like the skipper of a great cargo ship who won't discover what the cargo is until the ship comes into the harbor.
Those were the days of being unable to discover your baby's sex until the moment of birth. My husband and I discussed how we'd feel if we had a boy or a girl, what names we liked, wondered whom the child would resemble, worried about whether he or she would be healthy. The waiting was unbearably exciting, not only because of the baby's unknown sex, but also because my body was performing in ways that it somehow understood about without my knowing how: my body, on its own, was actually developing a separate new life! Impatience counted for nothing now. My body would produce the radiant surprise of a full-grown child of an unknown sex when it was good and ready to! YOU CAN'T HURRY A BABY GROWING.
Now I wait with unbearable excitement for various children, their children in tow, to drive back home for Christmas. A waiting tinged with worry, because anything could happen on the road. Yet, YOU CANNOT HURRY ALONG THE HOURS AND DAYS UNTIL YOUR CHILDREN DECIDE TO COME HOME AGAIN.
What is amazing now is to realize that I remember my times of waiting very clearly. The unbearable excitement. The worries. The tremendous anticipation. The frustration of being helpless while something beyond my control formed and coalesced and progressed to being new life, new experiences. The joy when what I'd waited for finally entered my life. I can only imagine Mary and Joseph a few short days before their baby's birth but surely they must have felt as I so often have felt: unbearable excitement and suspense, worry, the helpless feeling that the event was beyond their control, the anticipation of radiant surprise and joy when their child finally entered, warm and soft and wiggly and squalling into their waiting arms.
Waiting and expectation are as important for us as the moments we receive what we've waited for. Waiting strengthens us, sensitizes us, teaches us that life in all its wonder, awesomeness, and yes, awfulness, is by its very nature never something that we can predict or control. Waiting teaches us obedience and surrender to the unknown currents of life, surrender to the slow ripening of a body ready to produce new life, surrender to the gradual slowing down of a body preparing for death. Through every moment and stage of our lives, waiting produces the slow ripening of our souls so necessary for our new growth into greater life.
Instead of "wishing away" these precious few days before Christmas, we need to slow down a bit. Treasure the sweet anticipation of waiting. The almost unbearable excitement. The imagined joy of the arrival of loved ones. All those worries about whether everything will work out as we've planned are useless because life truly has a mind and a momentum of its own. What's most important is the gift of Christmas morning coming into our arms as precious and gentle as a newborn babe. The gift, ultimately, of hope. Love. Joy.
Christmas gives us the gift of Someone who will never change, will never be taken from us. The Prince of Peace, born again into our hearts year after year, is Life itself - total fulfillment beyond all anticipation or expectation. The Holy Child, like my doll so long ago, is One whom we can only half-grasp in the darkness of life here on earth. But we will hold that Holy Child forever in the endless Day of eternal joy.