<\/p>\n
On January 2nd<\/sup>, I had a series of strong The contractions motivated us. We bought a minivan. We set But all we’re doing now is waiting. I’ve had a few scattered <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n I want the baby to come. Soon. Now. I want to meet him or her. I want to name her or him. I want to hold the baby in my arms and introduce her\/him to Penny and William. I want to start exercising again. I want to eat like a normal human being again. I want.<\/p>\n And yet I hesitate to write any of those thoughts. Because I know the intensity of labor and delivery. I know the trauma my body is about to experience. I know the nights of feeding and rocking and praying for sleep. I know the disruption we are about to experience.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Throughout the Bible, there’s a theme of waiting upon the Lord. In the Old Testament, the Israelites wait four hundred years before they are rescued from Egypt. They wait again when they are taken captive in Babylon. And of course there are centuries of waiting for the promised Messiah. There is an immediacy to their experience of God. And there is a constant sense of longing and waiting and wishing and hoping and clinging to the promise that someday, God’s presence will be even more real.<\/p>\n Jesus comes on the scene, God in the flesh, the one we’ve been waiting for. And yet, for the early Christians and for Christians now, we constantly experience the tension of Jesus already among us–by the power of the Holy Spirit–and Jesus not yet in our midst. We are waiting for the final redemption, when the earth will be made new and there will be “no more mourning or crying or death.”<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n The fact that I am waiting for this baby doesn’t make the baby any less real. S\/he is full-term, ready to enter the world and grow up. And yet I am also waiting, without control over when s\/he arrives. I just know it will be soon. Similarly, the fact that I am still waiting for Jesus to return doesn’t make his presence among us any less real. It just makes it harder to see, sometimes.<\/p>\n Soon enough, I will go into labor, and a new life will enter the world.<\/p>\n The Spirit labors now, even as I write, to bring Jesus into our midst. And as with this child, I wait with expectation–with some fear and trembling, and some hope and wonder–for the Lord’s return. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On January 2nd, I had a series of strong contractions. They lasted over a minute each, and they came regularly, every ten minutes, for over an hour. It was 11 p.m. I called the doctor. She said, “If they get closer together and increase in intensity, come on in.” And then the contractions stopped. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\n
\ncontractions. They lasted over a minute each, and they came regularly, every
\nten minutes, for over an hour. It was 11 p.m. I called the doctor. She said,
\n“If they get closer together and increase in intensity, come on in.” And then
\nthe contractions stopped.<\/p>\n
\nup the bassinet and moved the changing table from William’s room to the
\nnursery. I scrubbed the dust off the diaper genie. We bought a cute little rug
\nfrom Ikea. We have a plan for who will stay with Penny and William, and Peter
\nwrote a list of things to bring to the hospital. We even have a few friends
\nwith SUV’s who will loan us their car should labor start in during a snowstorm.<\/p>\n
\ncontractions, but nothing like that night way back when. There are still things
\nto do–blogposts to write, in hopes that I can “bank” a few weeks. Penny and
\nWilliam’s baby books are on my desk, as I endeavor to give them a more-or-less
\ncompleted version when this baby arrives. And our daily life goes on–laundry,
\nbills, groceries, snuggling with the children, dentist and doctors and cupcakes
\nto Penny’s school for her birthday and…<\/p>\n