Waiting

Well, Ladies, this is the time we have been waiting for...the time of Waiting. And what is it we are waiting for? The coming of Jesus Christ. Secular society views this wait as a bit of a joke. Even I would joke at the end of my pregnancies that the second coming would come before the birth of my children. Waiting is equated with passiveness; the spiritual equivalent of sitting on the couch watching soaps and eating bon-bons (with the benefit of not having to go through labor at the end). Taken a step further this waiting can go on until, well, the second coming. Not a bad way to wait, is it? And wait. And what were we waiting for again?

If you were to have asked me before I became a mother about the season of Advent I would have said something about joyfully waiting for the birth of a child. That would have been when I was an observer who could hold an adorable baby and pass it back when it cried. Secular society promotes this idea because it's easy. Buy some cute outfits and our job is done. 

But we who have carried life inside of us know better, don't we? There is not a part of us while pregnant that is not busy one way or another. If we were too exhausted to leave the couch it was because our bodies were busy preparing new life. (I referred to my babies as tyrannical parasites while I was pregnant.) My point is that as passive as we may have appeared we were really hard at work preparing for birth. Our waiting was active and all-consuming. 

If we have been wise we will have spent our time in preparation for birth. Not just the get-the nursery-ready-and-meals-in-the-freezer kind of preparation (as important as that is), but the oh-my-God-I-have-no-idea-what-is-about-to-hit-me kind of preparation. Secular society has no real answer for the second one which is a shame because I don't know of one mom-to-be who wasn't at least mildly apprehensive about the upcoming birth.

Luckily we have the season of Advent to help guide us. Like pregnancy, the season of Advent is a time set apart to prepare for the birth of a child. Just as the birth of a child transforms the mother, so does the season of Advent transform our souls. Because, all joking aside, Jesus will come again. One day humanity's long wait will be over.  How will we have spent our time of Waiting?