Longing for the Season of Longing

I sit down to free write one afternoon.

I am tired of thinking about the pandemic. I’m tired of writing about it. I’m weary of its
curled tentacles reaching into every aspect of life and leaving a sticky residue. I’ve had enough
of the polarization—over the pandemic, but also politics and the best breakfast cereal with which
to start the day. I’m done.

I am beyond done. Most of us are.

We are nearing Advent and I hunger for the season of waiting as never before. This year I will listen to Handel’s Messiah with fresh ears and a heart attuned to what it means to wait. I will light candles and ponder light. I will linger long and lament.

And perhaps this is a gift.

In the midst of confusion and in light of new restrictions, I ache. My body manifests telltale signs of stress. Empty is what I feel more than anything else. And I wait.

For the end of the pandemic, for the news to report the news, for new life to spring forth from these crumbling vestiges of what we once believed was important. For the desire to write about something other than what I write about here again this morning,

For my doneness to transform to hope.

Enter Advent.

A time of expectation. By definition, a season of waiting. Preparation, not in the form of shopping or decorating or attending too many gatherings (ha!), but in growing intentionally still and resting my tired head on the shoulder of the One for whom we wait who has already come and who will come again.

A time to just be still.

As if we haven’t been stiller than we have in a long time this year.

But it’s stillness of another kind we feel in the call of Advent that invites us to enter into mystery and be held within it. And to be held is what we need more than anything else right now.

And like my squirming puppy who wants to go, go, go, we need to quiet ourselves and become still in order to be held.

And so, Advent.