We stop to say hi in the hallway, both of us twenty-weeks along, rounding bellies and smiling faces meet like a mirror, somehow a modern Mary and Elizabeth. Each time we meet, I’m surprised by how pregnant I am. It’s terrible, but with this second one, at times I even forget we’re expecting, as I chase our toddler around the house.
My friend’s look is different. It’s her first; the waiting and excitement consume her. She tells me “He’s huge, almost one-and-a-half-pounds!” I grin, realizing how not-yet-huge these bellies are, but nod in agreement. I leave the conversation feeling smug in my own wisdom of experience, but later wonder, why am I not the one more memorized, realizing the glory that’s coming?
As Christmas’s line up in our past, we forget, don’t sense advent’s slow urgency. We forget what it’s like to be that six-year-old loving and hating it as we eye the biggest package under the tree. All too often we screech into December in a pumpkin-pie coma, thankful but distracted by the gifts to buy and plans to make. How can we re-awaken that first-Christmas wonder? How can we remind ourselves of the glory that’s coming? Taste the anticipation like the smell of homemade bread baking in the oven? Lord, restore a childlike wonder in us, help us to wait well, like a new mother, joyful, yet almost scared at the Glory about to come and be With Us.
Evi Wusk 
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