Waiting on a Baby

This time of year seems especially focused on families: babies that fit snugly in festive stockings, children gathered around the sparkling tree, happy, perfect family photos littered across all forms of social media, and pregnancy announcements left and right. This is a hard time of year if one’s arms are empty.

I walk past the room that will, Lord willing, someday be our nursery.  It is mostly empty, save for a lone futon up against the left wall and some storage bins yet unpacked since we moved in. Someday, hopefully, a crib will replace the futon and a rocking chair will oust the storage bins. But for now, there is only the futon. The door to that room stays closed. We say it’s to conserve heat and “not heat space we don’t use,” but I know in part it’s to conserve our hearts, one way of avoiding the void in our home that reflects the ache in our hearts.

As Christmas draws near, I brace myself for the ache. The Two Week Wait will end right around Christmas this year – giving us an early Christmas gift or an early Christmas heartache.

Our Advent season has, in a very real sense, been spent waiting on a baby.  I can’t help but notice the irony and parallelism… While our offspring can never be compared to the Prince of Peace, I think of the way the world lay in wait for a king, for a Savior – never knowing they’d receive both in the form of a baby. This Christmas season, that feeling of waiting has been an incredible object lesson for my heart. Considering the way I long for a child, long to fill the futon room, long to hold creation that is part Cole, part me, and part God, I am reminded of how I should be longing for the One who came as a baby. That baby is all I need.