On the Edge of My Seat

Hello Everyone,

When I was in college, I had the following conversation with a nurse:

Me: “I think I’m growing a tail.”
Nurse: “Oh?”
Me: “Yup!”
Nurse: “Um . . .”

I have since learned that my initial diagnosis wasn’t quite right. I didn’t have a tail. I had a cyst near my tailbone. It wasn’t serious enough to treat, so I’ve lived with it for several years. I decided, however, that while I had time over my break, and while I still have insurance, I would get it removed. This required surgery, which I had last Wednesday.

For this surgery, I needed a general anesthetic, an IV and hospital socks with trendy rubber grips on the bottom. I wasn’t wearing my contacts, making the gurney ride to the operating room feel much faster than I’m sure it really was. All of this made me pretend I was on ER. I’ve never actually seen the show, but that’s what our imaginations are for, right? I don’t remember anything else until after the surgery, when I woke up for a moment. I thought vaguely, “I should show someone I’m awake so that they can have this bed for someone else.” THUNK. I plopped back asleep for an hour. I later asked a nurse if I was glaring at her. She said I wasn’t, but I’m sure I was. I always glare when I wake up.

And then I got to go home. At some point in my life (probably round about the time I had my first tooth pulled), I managed to convince myself that all surgery merits a milkshake upon completion, so my mom kindly obliged and got me one on the way home. For the first few days, I couldn’t do much beside sleep, read and eat. I couldn’t sit or lie on my back, so I reclined Roman-style all over the house and when I got tired of that, did several thousand laps around our kitchen/living room in small steps. I found to my surprise that I was bored for the first time in years. It turns out that much of what I enjoy doing involves sitting!

Over the next few days, my progress was a somewhat accelerated and more maladroit version of those evolution diagrams you see in which a monkey with serious back problems gradually transforms into a fully upright functioning human pedestrian. By Sunday morning, I was doing well enough that I was able to leave the house for the first time in four days and go to church. I was fine, but I had to sit forward in my chair the whole time. During the sermon, I chuckled to myself because I probably looked like the most attentive person in the congregation.

It was the third Sunday of Advent, the period in the church calendar leading up to Christmas. And as I sat listening to our pastor talk about the arrival of Jesus, I realized that perhaps my posture was more appropriate than I’d intended.

“Are you ready for Christmas?” People (usually cashiers in grocery stores) are always asking me this question this time of year, but I never know precisely what they mean. I suppose some mean, “Are you ready to be at home with your family?” Lots of people mean “Have you finished your Christmas shopping?” I’m sure some mean nothing, and it’s just a way to make conversation. But if Advent is all about that -- getting ready -- then how do we prepare ourselves for Christmas? I think that part of it is by being on the edge of your seat. It’s certainly not the most comfortable position. For one thing, it makes you stand out, like the eager student who gets to class fifteen minutes early to make sure he can sit front and center. In addition, it’s tiring and takes more energy than slumping back in our chairs. But all of that couldn’t be further from our mind when something we hear makes us sit up straight. Consider two situations:

First, you are watching TV at home one night when you hear an unfamiliar noise in another room. You sit up straight, mute the TV and whisper, “What was that?”

Second, you are at your son’s school play, for which he has been rehearsing for weeks. He comes on stage to say his two lines. You sit up straight and pay attention to every detail, straining to hear his voice.

Part of what happens in Advent is a strange, paradoxical combination of these two scenarios. Jesus’ birth is sudden but also long-anticipated, alarming but also fervently desired, unknown but also thoroughly intimate, loud enough to get our attention but also quiet enough that we have to silence all other distractions to truly hear it. In both cases, we sit up, we pay attention. God breaks into our world not with a clatter and a bang, but with a baby’s first bellow and a firmament full of hallelujahs. This is an event which the Old Testament prophets have been rehearsing for centuries, only this time it’s the real thing.

If I actually believe that Christmas is what it claims to be, I should be on the edge of my seat as I wait for it to come. Kids understand this part of Advent better than adults do, I think. Even when their eagerness is more about presents and Santa than about the Incarnation, I suspect it comes closer to true worship than the dread with which many adults approach this season.

So how do we foster an unabashed excitement for Christmas? How do we sit on the edge of our seats? We mute some of the distractions in our lives, even if it means standing out uncomfortably. We pay attention to details, the important ones. We spend some time with kids and borrow their enthusiasm. Advent marks the beginning of the church calendar, a time for starting out, for waking up. And if we’re lucky, we really do wake up, we shed our anesthetic fog and approach the morning glare-free.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse