As a child the entire month of December I felt like my insides were being tickled with excitement for first my birthday then Christmas! I think squirrels may have moved into my body for the month and prevented me from staying still for an extended amount of time. My 5 1/2 year old niece Raya is a lot like that. She was so excited to be a flower girl in the wedding, the kid couldn't be still. From her perspective she was doing the very best a 5 1/3 year old could do. As we were having our hair done before the ceremony she exclaimed several times 'Aunt Meg, this is the STILLEST I've EVER been'. It's this kind of hopeful, exuberant, waiting -- that has been my perspective on Advent, until this year.
This year I'm practicing a different kind of waiting, still hopeful, but also dreadful. Like a test of the emergency broadcast system, you sit through it because you HAVE TO not because that long monotone or obnoxious beeping feels good to your ears. Nearly each day of my holiday break from school, I schlep to the medical campus of my university, for tests, shots, or doctor's appointments. Each trip is accompanied with an hour long commute one way on the CTA, then at least an equivalent pre-appointment wait in the hospital. This Advent I wait not for Santa or the birth of Christ, this year I wait for my health. The irony for me is that many times as I wait I don't feel ill, but weary of the waiting. My time in Kenya taught me how to wait, yet I still grow frustrated with the experience of extended waiting. Yet I know that 'wait and see' may be the most truthful thing a physician may ever tell me. For me this spiritual season of waiting is not the squirrelly exciting that often gets paired with the season, rather it's a weary and worn hope that someday sooner than later the things I dread the most will be over.
