What to expect when you're expecting: a sermon for the first week of Advent

....If you’re someone who has experienced pregnancy and birth, then you’ve experienced something uniquely your own—something that no one, not even another woman who has given birth, can really know. It’s an odd, in-between experience: your baby is here already—and yet, not yet. The little flickers you feel (which later turn into full-on thumps on your ribcage that make you regret ever seeing Alien because you’re pretty sure that any more force and that kid will bust right on through, completely bypassing the birth canal) are the assurances that the forthcoming reality of babe-in-arms is already begun, already gathering life and strength, and all you have to do is wait for it. Expecting.

Did I say all you have to do is wait for it? Have I suddenly lost my mind, blanked out the fact that “all you have to do” is actually a huge amount of preparation and work and worry???  Don’t eat fish. Avoid soft cheeses, unless you’ve got solid proof they’ve been pasteurized. Don’t forget the prenatal vitamins. Eat lots of leafy greens, they’re a great source of folic acid. Take up prenatal yoga and start practicing that weird breathing. Don’t let anyone know you have the occasional sip of wine, and for sure, don’t get caught in the liquor store buying wine for communion because someone will give you the stink-eye. Brave the chaos that is Babies-r-Us and register: strollers, rattles, bibs, bathtub, swing—and do your best to avoid the rampant gendering of blue and pink themed objects. Research diapers—breastfeeding—birth. Read Girlfriend’s Guide, What to Expect, Smart Woman’s Guide to Better Birth. Write up a birth plan. Fend off all the unsolicited advice and uninvited belly pats. Try not gain any more or less than the recommended 25-35 pounds, then try not to worry about the fact you gained over 45 and weigh more than your own dad instead.

And worry. Is that kid all right in there? Fingers, toes, brain. Diaphragm.

And then, those last days counting up to—and then beyond—the “due date.” You thought the 40 weeks leading up to that date were long but now, time telescopes into a neverending stretch of expectation that eventually leaves you convinced that nope, you’re gonna be pregnant forever. This baby is not coming out. Other women have babies, but not you. The day you’re waiting for, the baby you’re expecting, is never, ever going to appear.

I’m serious about this. At post-date 15 days, after countless hours of yoga squats, massage, evening primrose oil, castor oil, and other things best left unmentioned in a sermon—nothing, and nothing, and nothing. As silly as it sounds, the same signs that once gave you hope that your expectation would become reality, start to convince that nothing will ever change. You are doomed to be pregnant forever. And all your work, all your preparation, all your hoping, all your expectation, is in vain.

This is what to expect, when you’re expecting.

This is Advent.

We are living in that time of post-date expectation, that time in which all the signs, all the flickers of life, that used to give us hope of fulfillment now just make us sigh because we’re having trouble believing that anything will ever change. All the signs, all the flickers of hope, are less comforting than they are frustrating—because we want to hold the full reality of squirming baby in our arms.

This is what to expect, while we’re expecting.

This is Advent. The re-telling, the re-living, of the post-date expectation of the world for the birth of its Messiah. And as we re-tell and re-live this agonizing wait, we are at the same time describing our own present struggle for hopefulness and expectation—we are, indeed, waiting for this Savior to come back. We are a people of perpetual expectation.

And we may, some of us, be stuck in that moment before the onset of labor, where the stubbornness of our material reality in its resistance to that transformational moment of birth has us convinced that there’s really nothing at all that we’re waiting for. That our expectation is in vain. That all our work is in vain. That nothing we do, not even—most regrettably—the castor oil, is going to make our expectations come to life.

If this is you, if you, like me, have been stuck in that moment of lost expectations, pause. And look around you.

Look at Clare, at Annalise, at Emmett Adu: expectations, come to life. As indeed, we believe the world witnessed two thousand years ago, in the expectation-come-to-life in the birth of another child, a child whose coming was expected from the very beginning of time itself.

And take hope. Expectation will be fulfilled, in glory. We do not wait in vain. Soon, very soon, the baby we’re all waiting for, the Messiah we are expecting, will arrive. Maranatha; come quickly, Lord Jesus.