Waiting with Joy

One year ago, exactly, I was waiting for a phone call. I was ready, bursting with anticipation, my phone glued to my hip all day and all through the night. My sister was expecting her second baby, and the plan was for Mom and me to jump in the car as soon as we got the call. We’d make the two-and-a-half hour drive so we could watch big sister Addie while her mom and dad were in the hospital.

It was an Advent like no other, waiting for this baby son to come into the world.

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

The call came at 2:00 a.m. in the dark quiet of a snowy morning. I leaped out of bed before the second ring. “It’s time,” my sister said. “We’re headed to the hospital.”

After all the waiting, all the expectation, all the hope, it was time. This long-awaited baby was coming.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!

The arrival came with pain, to be sure. But when Baby Grant came into the world, there was indeed much rejoicing.

This Advent I found myself waiting again. But this time, instead of waiting for a birth, I was waiting for a death.

Once again I kept the phone beside me night and day, waking and sleeping. But this time my heart weighed three hundred pounds each time the phone rang.

My grandfather had lived a good life. He was a man of the greatest generation—a hard worker and a man of quiet but deep faith. He never would have abided my saying so, but he was a hero: first as a B-17 pilot over Europe during World War II and then as the faithful father to twelve children. He had been married to my grandma for almost 71 years—a lifetime in itself. His was quite a legacy: a legacy of faithfulness and wit and wisdom and love and dozens upon dozens of people who share his name.

And now he was ready to go home. I kissed his cheek last Sunday, aware that it would likely be the last time on this side of heaven.

I knew it was time—we all did. And yet somehow 94 still seemed too young. God has planted eternity in our hearts, which means that death always comes too soon. We are made for life, not death.

Oh come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Thy people with Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight

The call came one evening after dinner, and somehow I missed it. I must have been in the basement, throwing a load in the wash. My dad’s voice was on the message: “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “It’s bad news for us, because we’ll miss him. But it’s all good news for him.”

At Advent we celebrate the gift of Emmanuel. God with us, to comfort those who mourn in lonely exile. God with us, to disperse the gloomy clouds of night. God with us, to put death’s dark shadows to flight.

As we inhabit this weary world, we grieve and we wait and we ache. But we also rejoice, because death isn’t the end of the story. The pangs of death make way for new life—the kind of life that never ends.

Until then, we wait. And we wait with joy.

God with us. Us with God. Emmanuel.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!