I notice them most when I’m not moving: the squirms, kicks, and hiccoughs of two tiny people in my womb. Already they have different personalities.
Baby A’s movements are obvious and distinct; like a Looney Tunes cartoon character travelling underground, I can clearly see a foot or elbow on the move just below my skin. Baby B is more subtle, only felt when I place my hand on my belly in just the right place and find someone dancing to an unknown tune or massaging my organs.
I must sit and relax to notice. I must quiet my mind to let the joy and anticipation sink in. Sometimes, we can only notice the most profound moments and miracles in our lives in silence and stillness.
It’s a special thing to be pregnant before Christmas. Advent – the season of waiting – feels very real and personal when you are waiting for your own miracle. It makes it easier to unite your waiting with Mary and ponder it all in your heart, as she did.
How many of us spend the few weeks of Advent careening toward Christmas instead of approaching it in thoughtful anticipation? We get stressed out shopping for decorations, gifts, and special foods, exhausted by standing in lines, and burdened by the number of family gatherings and events in our schedules.
This Advent, I’m finding myself drawn toward quiet places and slower paces. I’d rather sit in a cozy chair re-reading favourite books and imagining myself as a mother bird sitting on a pair of eggs – being productive by simply existing in the right place – than go shopping or take my 3-year-old to photo ops with Santa.
For pregnant women, the instinct of “nesting” is joked about as a sudden burst of energy that makes moms scrub baseboards and purge kitchen cabinets. But, looking with anticipation toward the joy of new life in this season, I’m realizing nesting is more like prayer.
Minnesota midwife Jana Studelska wrote: “To give birth … a woman must go to the place between this world and the next, to that thin membrane between here and there. To the place where life comes from, to the mystery, in order to reach over to bring forth the child that is hers… We need time and space to prepare for that journey. And somewhere, deep inside us, at a primal level, our cells and hormones and mind and soul know this.”
During Advent and Christmas, the “membrane” between heaven and earth feels thin. The air is pregnant with the excitement that something big is coming. We can hustle toward it with piles of gift bags, dishes, and to-do lists, or we can see it in the distance and amid the chaos create space for the anticipation to wash over us, in awe of what it means.
Nesting and Advent are times of waiting, of letting one’s mind and spirit catch up to physical reality, of pondering the miracle of new life.
Nesting doesn’t just come naturally to third-trimester moms. During winter, we observe the natural world slowing, hibernating, and storing its energies. Author Katherine May writes in her memoir Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times that when life presents a challenge, we ought to “winter” – to slow down, retreat from all but the most important things, and take care of ourselves with grace and peace, acknowledging the season we are in. Just as plants and animals pass through seasons, our lives are also seasonal.
“We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty,” May writes. “This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bones. Given time, they grow again.”
There is something in us that craves silent nights, especially during natural winters or personal ones. May suggests that in northern countries, where the season of winter is harsher and longer, this is especially true. The word hygge, used in Denmark and Norway, describes an atmosphere or state of being comfortable and content (and sometimes just means “cozy”). But the roots of the word also include to “think” and “consider.”
This Advent, when the fireplace is crackling, a beautiful carol comes on the radio, or these little babies make their presence felt in the depths of my being, I like to let my mind switch gears from planning and preparing to praying and pondering.
Christmas is coming. When it does, it will be full of activity. But first, before we join Mary and Joseph and the shepherds in marvelling over a sweet baby boy who will one day save the world, we have Advent. We have a tired couple travelling, mulling over visits from angels and compelling dreams, and maybe experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions and swollen feet. We have the gift of waiting, surrendering, praying, and pondering with Mary about what all of this means.
By being intentional about this season of anticipation, we can become more in tune with the miracle of new life, the sparkle in a child’s eyes at the first snowfall, and the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
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