Waiting

My updates over the last several months have been few and far between, as many of my readers have pointed out. The reason is that I never feel I have anything to write about. because since July, I've been waiting. Every four weeks or so, I'd go to the doctor, he'd tell me nothing has changed, and I would wait until the next appointment, when he would tell me the same thing. I'm still waiting. My next appointment is Friday, January 13, when I will receive either great news or devastating news, either my leg is healing, or I need another surgery (if the pain is any indication at this point, I fear it will be the latter).

Waiting takes on a peculiar significance during advent, a significance that tends to be lost in the American consumerization of Christmas, because Christmas seems to arrive the day after Halloween. But once advent was a time for fasting, which was observed as strictly as Lent. Advent was not a time of celebration, but for penitence. The celebration came with the arrival of Christmas.

When I was a kid, my dad would always say that the anticipation was what made Christmas exciting, and while at the time I didn't believe him (I was excited to open presents NOW!), I learned that he was right. Counting the days till Christmas on a construction paper chain or gumdrops on a string of dental floss or a stuffed mouse on a pocket calendar doubled the excitement every day as we saw Christmas coming closer.

My mom used to read to us from a book called When All the World Was Waiting, an advent book that traced the prophecies about the coming Messiah from Genesis up until the coming of the Magi. It helped us to see that while waiting four weeks for Christmas might seem like a long time to us, the world had been waiting for the coming of Jesus for thousands of years, and as excited as we were on Christmas day, the world was that much more excited when Christ finally arrived.

I don't have a great conclusion to wrap this up. I've just been thinking about the nature of waiting, especially since this Sunday when I attended an Anglican church and heard for the first time that advent is supposed to be a time of fasting and preparation. Now is not the time for celebrating, but that day will come. Someday I'll be able to walk and work and get on with my life, and that will be a time for celebration and something to write about.