A friend requested that I repost a series of advent letters that I wrote several years ago. Advent is a time of expectation and preparation, a time of hopeful waiting. Over several Advent seasons, I’ve tried to imagine what this time would have been like for all those who played a role in the nativity. For a time, I knew the pain of infertility, but when I consider Elizabeth, I see that my struggles pale in comparison to hers. Most importantly, I’ve come to understand how Elizabeth’s hope and trust in God’s love exemplify what Advent is all about.

Dear Elizabeth:

Recently, I was standing before an Advent calendar with my grandson, and he said, “Grandma, look at all the days until Christmas! 24 long days!” Twenty-four days, indeed. For most adults, this is a blink, a blip on time’s radar screen, a proverbial drop in life’s bucket.

But Elizabeth, not so with us. I waited for years, you for decades–our arms childless and our hearts expectant. In season after season of fruit cake and divinity, I waited for God, for anyone to ring my door bell and place an exquisitely wrapped plate in my hands. On it, the frankicense of family, the fragrant assurance that two would become three would become four. . .

But you! Your expectation spooled out before you, skeins of your heart’s finest fibers in piles at your feet. You were an expecting mother far beyond what is expected. When a child called Mother, you stopped, turned, and watched as your arms left your sides, reaching, yearning, and stretching into the space that spanned the years between child-bearing and old age. Not a day–or night–went by when you did not see the child of your dreams in the faces of other mothers’ children. And not a moment passed when you did not feel the absence of the sweet weight of a sleeping child on your chest.

Day after day, you sent your prayers heavenward like eager doves, their wings beating the darkness around you. You baked the bread to feed your empty womb. And finally, when skin loosened from your bones, thin and mottled with sun and age, you settled into that singular space of childless women.

And then! God spoke: Behold Elizabeth, wife of Zecahriah and mother of John, a righteous and faithful man who will make ready a people prepared for the Lord. And in that barren space, your child grew and leapt for joy.

Oh Elizabeth, I have been an impatient woman. I have worked and worried through most of my days, believing that my will alone might bring me the blessings I so desired. I have stood before my life like a child before an Advent calendar. Twenty-four long days! As if my urgency were God’s. As if counting the days might make the answers to my prayers come more quickly.

Now, as skin loosens from my bones, I pray that my will might loosen, too. Unbound, I pray that I might faithfully wait, might know that neither worry nor work will bring God’s blessings. Unbound, I might join you, a sister-in-waiting. And here, we might prepare our hearts for the Grace and Peace from whom all blessings flow.

With hope and expectancy,

Shannon