When the waiting comes to an end.  What then?

My family and I celebrated Christmas early this year.

I’ll admit it was a little weird.  Driving home I half expected the rest of the world to be closed for business.  At home with their respective families celebrating, eating, tearing away at paper.  But they weren’t. They were experiencing December 19th.  Not faux December 25th, like me.

It’s left this week leading up to Christmas – the real one – to feel…well….like a normal week.  It got me thinking about what really makes Christmas feel like it does.  I know I’m supposed to say – Jesus – yes, Jesus is the reason for the season, but even in that I’ve discovered it all comes down to one thing.  Anticipation.

There is this painting of the angel visiting Mary by Henry Osawa Tanner and it’s probably the most down to earth and realistic depictions I have ever seen of this event.  She sits there, noticeably shaken and in awe, young in both age and  life experience, and yet there is this sense that she is willing to receive whatever it is that may be coming up next. However crazy it may seem.

She has been waiting for a savior to come.  She will wait nine months as he forms and grows inside her. She will rear him, teach him, hold him, feed him. Then she will look up one day, and he will be dying for her.  What then?  A lifetime of anticipation and there it is in one act.  What now?

Receive.

Which I’m realizing is harder than it might seem.  There are countless things that call out for my attention.  When will I be older?  What will high school be like?  When will I get my license? College? Who will that person be that I will marry?  My kids?  Will they be anything like me?  It ends up that once I’m done with one milestone, I’m off and on to the next thing.  That window of time where the act of receiving feels more like grace rather than the necessary result of all my striving starts becoming shorter and shorter.  And I think the reason is that in that space between wanting and receiving and then wanting again, I’m not really sure what to do.  And that’s it right there. I don’t have to do anything.  I can’t do anything.  I get to enjoy.  Delight in.  Revel.

I came across a beautiful poem by Anne Jackson yesterday – Holy, Restless Anticipation – and it’s words resonate with everything the Lord has been whispering to me lately…

Stay right here a little while

Stay right here my dear

Hear me whisper to your heart

And take away your fear

Two days from now we will all be in the weird space together.  Hungover from all the presents and gearing up to change the world – or at least our little one – in 2010.  And I guess before I make promises I may have no intention of keeping, I want to think about some promises that have always been kept and will never change.  May anticipation drive me forward this year, not to mindless work, or to discontent – but to rest and joy.