Advent III: Interlude (Wait Here)

My Advent poems this year are all themed around a character in the story—except for this one. This one felt appropriate to share as we hit the halfway point of the month. As Christmas speeds toward us, which may feel exhilarating or exciting or aching or exhausting, here is a moment to pause and remember that now is the time to wait.

---

on the cusp of celebration
Advent reigns us back, this frozen
frame right before
we toss the confetti—really our wide eyes
are about to crinkle into starbursts,
a preview of full-throated joy,
but here, paused, they look
startled. dismayed. 
alarmed.
who knows what waits for us
in the restless dark. 
long spans of lightless days wait,
all the old winter demons we thought we’d thrown off 
in the false bravery of summer wait, and so do
the lies, ancient as dirt. 
we writhe like a toddler out of the hands
of his father, cortisol 
spiking, but Advent is inexorable,
a hand against the solar plexus: 
wait. 
wait. 
here in the thing you so desperately wish
to be rid of, the grating discomfort,
the exhausting downward slide—
wait here. 
the confetti will come. it will be
tossed like a kerchief of surrender,
it will flow like wine
into the cracks of cobblestone streets, 
it will dance from your hands wild and abundant and free.
but the picture is still paused and
it is not time to press play.
wait. 

so we do, pressed against windowpanes,
confetti moldering in our weakening grips,
watching for whatever will rise
out of the formless shadows that crawl up our legs
like a cape, watching for whatever 
waits for us in the dark.

Advent is about waiting—remembering the waiting for Christ’s first coming and sitting in the waiting for his second.

This is a theme I cherish. There were years I spent waiting to see if God would give me back any of the dreams it seemed he had taken from me. Waiting for my life to begin (cue the Tangled song) while everyone else’s seemed to be rushing by in a bright parade.

Now I feel caught up in the parade myself—college, a job, future plans, “normal” and extraordinary things I once thought I’d never have—but there are still things I’m waiting for. Things that hurt to wait for. I think we all have things we hold tenderly in our hearts, whether we recognize it or not, that we are waiting for, and it’s a gift to have this season to come face to face with them. And to draw closer to the God who holds our dreams with us and for us, who so often says to us wait when that is the last thing we want to do.

Here are some quotes that say it better than I can:

No list of things to be done. The day is providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

{ Cormac McCarthy, The Road }

This captures waiting to me—no to-do list, no future plans or hopes or even fears. Just a frozen now. We want to jump ahead to “things of grace and beauty,” but we often forget that they all have their provenance, their beginning, in pain. The ache that does not abate. The void that does not fill. The wanting that does not lessen. The most precious things—they begin here.

---

Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing. So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what I was waiting for.

{ Marilynne Robinson, Gilead }

If ever there was a book about waiting, it's Gilead. There are so many quotes I could’ve picked from it, but this one gets at the heart of it all.

There are types of waiting that are aimed at a thing, some future situation or relationship or item we want. The specificity of the wanting is sharp.

Then there is waiting that is indistinct and vague, an inarticulable unease or sense of unrest. This might be harder. It’s an ache, like the feeling at the back of your throat when you need to cry. Waiting—for what?

And yet maybe this, even this, is a blessed time. Maybe we don’t always need to know what we are waiting for.

---

There was no sleep there, either. There was not much sleep anywhere in Earthsea, tonight, Ged thought. He grinned a little as he thought it; for he had always liked that pause, that fearful pause, the moment before things changed.

{ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind }

Advent is about waiting—but it is important to remember that waiting is not eternal. It is not the whole of the story. It is the pause. We must not forget to pause, but we must also not forget that what is paused will be played again.

This is just the moment before things change. So while we wait we can also grin with Ged in anticipation.

---

“The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.”

{ Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ }

“In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.” Gosh. In the pain and promise of waiting, this is where God’s people are called to live, to build homes upon, to take root among, to live faithful and courageous and creative and hopeful and honest lives amidst the waiting.

---

For those who are in particularly intense season of waiting—for those whose lives have become or have always been a bitter stretch of unfulfillment with no end in sight—you are closer than the rest of us to the truth of God’s kingdom. You are close to His very heart. This is where He is, the dagger-tip now that waiting holds to your fragile skin.

I pray your particular waiting ends. I pray you see the miracle the deep darkness is preparing. I pray the wind shifts and the change that is gathering like a stormcloud finally breaks, and the rain comes.

Until then, hold fast. When others rush to the party, to the confetti, to the happy-ever-after, and you feel that nameless weight hold you back, look around—you will see another One in the corner beside you. The dark holds many things to fear. It may also hold all the things we hope for.

---

In Other Words…

It is the perfect time to make sure everyone knows about the absolute best Advent song by my fave Sara Groves:

And here is my Advent playlist, titled (you guessed it) we wait. I’d love to hear what songs you would add!

Now more than ever, as we wait — let’s stay awake.

Aberdeen