More Waiting

Yesterday began the second week in Advent.  We are waiting...

There seems to be something audaciously naive about being 39 weeks pregnant. We say things like "I'm excited!" or "I'm so ready."  But I am standing on the precipice, the cusp of one of the most life changing moments in life, one which I can neither predict nor control.  How can I possibly stand in such a dizzying place?  

Soon - maybe today, maybe next week - I will enter into labor. As women have known since the dawn of time, this is a life's work; there is pain, demands, danger.  There is no getting out of it or around it.  There is no predicting it or controlling it.  

And then, there is the baby. We know a lot more than we used to, ahead of time, but yet he remains a complete mystery to me.  What will he look like?  Will he be healthy?  Special needs? Difficult or charming personality?  Entirely in the dark about all these factors, I am committed to him forever, body and soul.  I will embrace him into myself, into my family, into my future.  And most startling of all, into my firstborn son.  Not just for the unknowns of now, but the unknowns of 10 years from now, 20 years from now.  Everything he is and will be, I am now making room for in the midst of all that is most sacred to me.  

Where else in life do we rush so heedlessly?  Who else would I ever invite into my life with so much love and commitment, and so little vetting?  

I waddle slowly up the icy steps and into the coffee shop where I am meeting a friend.  Everyone in the building, strangers to me, watch me as I move, beam at me affectionately, pronounce blessings upon me, and graciously describe me as "glowing" and "radiant" as I continue to lug my large, cumbersome self to a chair.  I answer their questions with the cheerful-yet-awkward smile that matches the rest of my body: yes, due this week; yes, any time now; yes, so ready!  yes, so excited! 

There is something very deep, very spiritual about this time of waiting and the life-giving culmination that is coming soon.  There is something about this lesson that, having taken over my very body and self, sinks deep into my soul as well.  I am learning something, I am being changed.  My mind is concentrating on lifting each foot and setting it back down again without too much pain, but my soul is being taught.  Waiting, surrender, sacrifice, realization of one's lack of control, giving a "yes" to what may come, whatever may come - this is how we are deepened, purified, strengthened. 

I am standing (with one hand on my lower back where this boy has wedged his head against my spine; with the other hand supporting my over-crowded belly in front) on the cusp, on the precipice.  I am looking forward, always forward, but can see nothing.  And yet I am continuing on ahead, believing myself to be excited, ready to meet whatever comes.  
It is surrender, it is hope.  I am literally bursting with life.