I’ve been trying to be mindful of the waiting process this last week. That’s what we’re sort of re-enacting during Advent – the waiting for the One who is coming.

Beth Moore wrote this on Sunday:

Ears ached with emptiness, yearning to hear sounds of heaven. Some word from God. Nothing.

1 century then 2, 3 then 4. One coal-black night the silence shattered like glass, the divine sound barrier broken by cries of a newborn wrapped in swaddling clothes & lying in a manger.

What a helpful description of the Advent of Christ. Silence, then sound. Hoping, and then help arrives. I can only relate on a small scale.

I’ve waited for the snow to melt, the temperatures to rise, and the trees to bloom in New England eighteen times now. It’s a long wait in my opinion.

I’ve waited for despair and depression to be lifted, to be healed. It took so much longer than I was hoping.

But thinking about waiting also reminded me of waiting out in front of my elementary school, middle school, high school – after summer camp, gymnastics class, or a doctor’s appointment. Oftentimes the last one there, alone and unsure of how I would get home.

While I waited, I hoped. Hoped about who would come for me.

I always hoped it would be my grandmother. Even at that young age, though, I had learned that desires aren’t often fulfilled, and so I would try and envision the person I didn’t want to come for me driving up. Thinking on the thing I didn’t want, seemed to up my chances for the thing I did want. As if God could be moved by my mental manipulation.

On the days my mental efforts “worked” I rejoiced.

My grandmother was a light in the darkness for me so many times during those years. She shattered my despair with her joy and smile, with her affection and her many loving sacrifices on my behalf. On days I stayed home from school sick (and always alone), I would call her and ask a silly question like “How do you make macaroni and cheese?”

Never mind that the directions were on the package, and I had taught myself to do many things by age 10. I just wanted her to know that I was home, sick, and alone. When she drove across town to take care of me or bring me something to eat, it was less about her falling for my trick and more about her loving me.

She came for me often. Came in full awareness of my manipulation, but still loving me, nurturing me, and having compassion for me.

And like Beth Moore described, I ached for her to come. I yearned for the love and acceptance she brought. Unexpected tears spill as I type this and realize how much of my childhood and teen years were spent aching and yearning for that kind of love which was so absent in my own home.

The Advent candle lit on Sunday was the one representing love. It is meant to remind us of the great love the Father showed us by sending Jesus. It was a sacrifice in spite of so many things…

ongoing sin

previous idolatry

pride

selfishness

rebellion

betrayal

attempts at manipulation

…but that’s what love is: sacrifice, service, putting another’s needs ahead of your own, prioritizing someone besides yourself.

Recently, someone asked me “How do you know if you love someone?” They meant it in more of a romantic sense, and while I do think attraction and feelings of affection have a place in that case, the answer I gave was about willingness to sacrifice for the person, to serve them for the rest of your life.

Last week I spent one whole day in the emergency room with a young woman who was very ill. She could barely walk, and hardly talk due to the weak state she was in. She needed someone to come for her, and if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t want to be the one to do it. I had a long list of tasks and errands to do that day. I had purposely cleared my calendar of all appointments but an early morning coffee date and was prepared to be extremely productive and efficient…on my own terms of course.

God’s idea of productivity often looks very different from mine, and as we sat in the waiting room for hours He helped me surrender to what His tasks for me were that day – sitting, waiting, listening, drying weepy eyes, rubbing sore shoulders, covering with blankets, helping to the bathroom, praying, reassuring, hugging, nourishing, nurturing.

The more hours that passed, the more I began to see God’s purpose in having me there. It was a chance to come for someone. A way to serve. A place to sacrifice. For someone who needed love, maybe even more critically than I had as a child and young woman. It was an invitation to do for someone else just what had been done for me. It was a call to worship a God who came for me in Christ, and it was a blessing. (Truly.)

My grandmother is ninety-two years old now. As much as I would still like it, she really can’t come for me anymore, though she does her best via text message (that’s right!) or phone conversation. In a small way, though, she demonstrated for me what Jesus did in coming at Christmas.

After all the waiting and the hoping, He came.

With love

With patience

With covering

With helping

With nurturing

With refuge

With salvation

And with His first coming, He granted a sure hope for the second, for which we still wait. It will be even better than my Gigi coming to pick me up from school, which I thought was pretty wonderful at the time…

He will swallow up death for all time,
And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces,
And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;
For the Lord has spoken.
And it will be said in that day,
“Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”

Isaiah 25: 8-9