Restless, Restful Nesting near Epiphany
Approaching labor and delivery with the Star in mind
It’s a new year, and now Twelfth Night1 on this Eve of Epiphany. We’ve enjoyed a few special celebrations during these last days of Christmas, from sledding as a family to playing games to breaking in our Wendy’s Frosty Tags now that the kids have returned to school. I’ll be making a King Cake today, and we’re finishing taking down the Christmas decorations. I normally save this task for the week or two after Epiphany has started because we love the twelve days of Christmas, and we’ve enjoyed hosting a party the last six years or so around Twelfth Night with Christian friends as we ring out the Christmas season. But we will have a small family party tonight instead, to move into the hygge of Epiphany, because another imminent date approaches tomorrow.
That’s right: this pregnancy has made it to its final days. I’ll be induced early tomorrow morning, and we will welcome another son into our arms.
My nesting has been more gradual than I remembered from past pregnancies. This has more to do with my flawed memory, I’m sure, than with the fits and starts, the slightly frenzied work bursts interspersed with quiet and stillness, that have characterized the last few weeks.2 I can point to Christmas as a cause of this, and certainly the peace after the early December crush has been a gift, as I’ve gotten tired more easily. It also has made me appreciate the idea of the role of waiting and time that blankets this time in the church year.
“When the fullness of time had come,” we read in Galatians, “God sent forth His son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.” So we revel at Christmas in the time that God chose to send us Jesus. We also remember His circumcision and naming on the eighth day, the proper day of this ceremony that marked the first shedding of His blood on His lifelong road to Golgatha. We heard about the purification at the temple, where Simeon and Anna, who had been waiting for Him, finally confessed Jesus as the Saviour. And soon we will celebrate the Light unto the Gentiles with the visit of the Magi.
It’s clear in Matthew, chapter 2, that sometime after Jesus was born, Gentile wise men came from the east, seeking the King of the Jews and of all of us. It’s not clear when this actually happened, but it was likely weeks, months, or even a year after Jesus’s birth. For since the Bible says the wise men went into a house to see Jesus, we can confidently say, for the love of all that is tinseled: the Wise Men did NOT show up at the stable to see Jesus in the manger. The Christ's first guests were poor, smelly sheep caretakers. The shepherds heard angels in the fields outside Bethlehem and immediately went to see Jesus. These other guests took much more than an hour to get from their homes to the Promised One.
So I appreciate the Magi more this year—the long quest they took to follow the star. Their journey echoed the long, long wait of God’s people from the protoevangelium God spoke to the serpent at the Fall to His humble birth. The Magi sought the One deserving of both their physical hardships in seeking Him and their anticipatory hope in waiting, waiting until the day that they would actually see and touch Him. It’s certainly not unlike pregnancy, with its bodily toil and seemingly endless road (at least at the end).
The restless quest and yet restful certainty in following a Star that would not lead the Magi astray is also part of my experience this time around. It’s taken me years, and many pregnancies, to be able to bear with some grace the aches and discomfort of a growing baby in my body and be patient in waiting for his birth. I’m also more aware of the reality of what happens after—the heavy demands of time and effort and care a newborn needs, mixed with the ongoing needs of my other children as well as those of Jon and me. More time before a child’s birth means, in theory, more time to finish tasks that won’t have to be done, or done as soon, after labor and delivery. It also means I can practice the kind of patience I will need very shortly, the patience that remembers the long road, the one running from the present to the end of days, either of our individual lives or to the Lord’s final coming.
We heard a great sermon on Wednesday, based on the text of twelve-year-old Jesus at the temple. What horror and fear Mary must’ve felt for days, not knowing where the Son entrusted to her care by God even was. “You have lost your son and Mine” meant His immediate loss in the post-festival crowd, but it also, once again, pointed to the sword that would pierce Mary’s soul much later. And yet—and yet! She was also given to rejoice, as God’s favored one, as Gabriel told her. As the pastor preached, she—and we—both rejoice and bear the sword of suffering in this life, as Christ did, too.
Tomorrow will be hard for me, there is no doubt. It will also be a day of great joy, God willing, one of the greatest days a mother can experience. What a priceless gift this is. In our small lives, we get to experience what Mary and Joseph did, with all of creation waiting with groaning, with Adam and Eve and Abraham’s line, and with the Magi, the birth of a child. Ours will wait for his baptism into Christ, into the Star of our salvation. And so He continues before us, as the old poem and carol confesses:
O Star of wonder, Star of Night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading,
Still proceeding,
Guide us to Thy perfect light.
A blessed Epiphany to you all.
Here are some Epiphany book recommendations from here, pictured below (please comment if you have questions about any of these):
See All the Household, one of my favorite resources for the liturgical year. We got their one-year lectionary calendar as a family gift during Advent, and I love it!
If anyone wonders or cares, I used a custom planner last year and now this year from Plum Paper with a template of weekly tracking prompts based on the Home Success Planner (I used to handwrite everything into a bullet journal, and I still do write in a lot, but it’s saved me a lot of time to have a bunch of things preprinted. No, I don’t get anything from these plugs other than knowing if someone wanted to know, well, here’s the info).
I’m praying for you, the baby, your husband, and your other children. May God bless this birth and be with you all in the days and weeks and months to come!