What are we waiting for?

Advent has rolled around again, and once again I am faced with the dual tasks of waiting and reflecting on the newborn Christ, and running around like a chicken with my head cut off shopping, decorating and attending holiday parties. This year, there is the added adventure of moving the week before Christmas Day. So, you would think that the fact that I have been snowed in for a week at my parent's house, on top of the week vacation I gave myself, would have me pulling out my hair. But I have, instead, found the space between waiting and running.

The week of my vacation, I had a lovely time. It was spent cooking for family that was coming for dinner and going out shopping for Christmas gifts. The week of Thanksgiving was spent in the same manner of all my weeks, running around trying to get as much done each day as possible.

But on Saturday, when I could and perhaps should have come home for church on Sunday, I instead accepted an invitation from my mom to stay and sew with some of her friends. We had a great time, of fellowship and laughter. We pieced utility (what my mom calls big squares stuck together in rows with no particular pattern) quilts for both children. We even quilted them, and mom was going to finish the binding and bring them for Christmas.

I did not watch the news until Saturday night. It turns out my window of opportunity to get home was Saturday. Saturday night brought in a storm so large and cold that it was the same storm in Seattle, WA as Denver, CO. It snowed all day on Sunday, a foot deep without drifting, in a sheltered area, on the back porch.

So, Sunday, we watched it snow, considered putting up the Christmas tree, and decided to bind those quilts. And start another one. We packed up our things in preparation of leaving Tuesday. I spent part of my time shoveling out the longest steepest driveway in America, and we started teaching the kids to sew. It did stop snowing, but it hasn't warmed above freezing yet.

Somewhere between Sunday and Wednesday, the frantic need to get home and get things done has been replaced by a complacency, a contentment to wait until it is safe and sane to be out again in the bustle. In the meantime, we have done more for my Christmas list than I ever imagined. My daughter is helping while learning to sew ( I won't say what, because some of you are getting them for Christmas.) The kids are not fighting and no one has said, "I'm bored."

I have learned a lesson about snow that I knew as a child but had forgotten once I grew up and moved away from it. The snow and the ice, which, in the right climate, are part and parcel of advent, are a physical reminder from God to slow down, and wait in hope, for good things. With no place else to go, we cannot run away from the problems and hurts. We cannot let them fester and we cannot ignore them. The trick, I think, is to use that snowed in experience as a metaphor for life writ large. Even if we are not snowed in, we need to remember the shut in, and we need to use this time to be with the hurt of the whole world. And we need to wait in hope, for with the coming of Christ, the healing of the problems and hurts is coming as well. And we need to remember that all year long. But we won't of course, and so we are given a season, each year, to reconnect with that feeling, with the waiting in hope, that is Christ born.