Anticipation...

...is keeping me waiting.

Carly Simon penned those words in 1971 about an upcoming date with Cat Stevens and ultimately Heinz Ketchup co-opted them for a famous commercial featuring the thickness of their product that ran throughout the decade.  While I deeply despise ketchup, Carly Simon's music has been a guilty pleasure of mine.  Regardless, the point is I anticipate... well, everything.  Thus, Simon's ditty is an appropriate theme song for my life.  I wait for things to go wrong; I expect to be disappointed; for relationships to end; for loss to occur; and for confrontation to be painful.  Heck, I even dread meetings!  My mind naturally creates worst case scenarios.  Repeatedly, life turns out so much more pleasant and beautiful than my expectations for it.  And, when it doesn't, I recover quickly.  Yet, I continue to anticipate the worst.

I thrive on routine.  I like it's predictability.  Habits are a comfort to me.  I rise before 5am to get in a run or go on a ride; consume a smoothie and a French Press of LaColombe Coffee; poke around on the interwebs; and head to the office for a day filled with my beautiful, brilliant, and sometimes broken students.  Lunch with my best friends and colleagues in the cafeteria provides laughter and a much needed respite in my day.  I head to bed early in order to do it all again.  

I LOVE calendars!  I've kept a detailed daily planner since I transferred to OBU as a junior in college who was overwhelmed by the new academic demands combined with flipping burgers at Sonic and pledging Atheneans.  On a visit home from my first job in Chicago, my then teenage brother stole my DayTimer.  He didn't do this to send me into crisis, but rather to make fun of me.  He selected a random day and entered everything that I need to do.  Wake up.  Brush teeth.  Go to the bathroom.  Eat breakfast.  He found my obsessive planning to be ridiculous and worthy of his mocking!  He likely still does as he has yet to maintain a calendar or planner himself.

In December, my routine begins to break down due to my fatigue and the innumerable activities that accompany the convergence of the end of a semester with the arrival of the holiday season.  The break beckons and I eagerly anticipate it while dreading it all the same.  My family life has been complicated by my father's death in 1982 and the resulting impact of that defining event over time.  My friends are busy with their own travels and family plans.  I look forward to the break in routine; the opportunity to truly Sabbath; the much needed solitude; and a few special moments with those I love most. However, I dread the awkwardness of being single during this season and the loneliness that occurs with the disruption of the very routine from which I need a respite.

It strikes me that Advent is an anticipation of sorts.  We plan for and anticipate the arrival of the Christ child.  Or rather, the celebration of that arrival.  At least that is what I understood the focus to be.  I was raised in a non-liturgical Protestant tradition.  As a result, the Church calendar, sacraments, and many of the rituals of religion aren't second nature to me as they are to some.  That, in celebrating his first coming, we anticipate the Messiah's second arrival on the world stage was rather lost on me.  It appears easy and relatively pleasant to look forward to the arrival of the baby Jesus in the manger.  We light candles or add characters to the nativity.  Some families post decorative calendars and remove dates as the 25th draws closer.  I recently learned about the French tradition of santons or "little saints". I love this practice of placing these beautifully crafted everyday people in and around the crèche as a way to celebrate Advent.  Yet, in all of the tradition and ritual, what are we actually anticipating?  Are we counting down the days until we receive all of our gifts or are we truly expectant for the Christ child's arrival? Add to all of this a need to be eager for his second coming?  Suddenly, I find Advent quite complex and confusing.  In such mental distress, all I can do is cling to the knowledge that he will make all things right and hope in his eventual return.

As I continue to think seriously about this Advent season, I am dwelling upon Ecclesiastes 9.11-12 and Psalm 42.  May the Word of the Lord be unto us both a hope and a challenge even as we anticipate together.

Ecclesiastes 9.11-12 (NRSV): Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.


Psalm 42 (NRSV):
Longing for God and His Help in Distress

To the leader. A Maskil of the Korahites.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’

These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God, my rock,
‘Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?’
As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.