23 Weeks.

It's the beginning of the season of Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas, and this is the third Advent that I have gotten to experience while being pregnant. It's been such a cool experience each and every time- remembering that God came to us as a baby and was carried by a woman... a woman very much like me, who lovingly caressed her growing belly and wondered at the WONDER of it all.



Pregnancy is amazing. Miraculous. In just nine short months, there is a new little person. Where there was nothing, there is suddenly someone... a person who is unique from any other person before it! And the fact that all of that energy and life and potential is wrapped up inside of me makes me feel humbled, yet so incredibly honored.



Ezra was asking me the other day about marriage and babies and at one point he said to me, "I wish I was a girl so I could carry a baby inside of me!"

And then, not even 10 seconds later, he said, "Or wait, never mind. I definitely want to be a boy because pushing the baby out hurts."

I laughed and told him he was a smart man, but inwardly I thanked God that I get to have such an intimate knowledge of the mystery of life. I have had no other experience that has taught me so much about Him, and for that fact alone the pain is more than worth it.

Wait Loss.

The other morning, both boys woke up super early- around 6:00- and they were raring to start their day before my eyes had even been propped open by my morning coffee. (The audacity!)

I sat on my couch in a daze as I do every other morning and turned on some cartoons and made Myer a bottle.

After a short while of lazing about and bumping into things that never move, I noticed a warm glow hovering in my living room. I glanced out the window and saw the most violently shocking slash of hot pink and orange ripping across the sky above my house.

The sunrise.

It was so brilliantly beautiful that it sucked the air right out of my lungs. Before I even had a chance to inhale again, I was rounding up the boys and locating shoes and jackets in the dark and herding us all out the front door. We tumbled out into the cold kindling morning, feeling the burn of the chilled air in our lungs, and headed due east.

There is an empty field on the backside of our neighborhood, and we trekked towards it. We stood at it's edge in the dark and looked up at the gaudy display of love above our heads. It was already very much faded from the moment I saw it through the living room window... like the effort of such a neon burst had worn it thin and quickly burned up its reserves. I breathed deep, thanked God for making the sky, and reassured Ezra that our couch was not far away. (He was saying that his legs didn't feel like walking anymore.)



This sunrise got me thinking about the whole season of Advent that is coming upon us once again. The season of waiting for the coming light. And the thing I kept thinking about was how much of God is tucked away behind the veil of waiting.

We, as a culture today, completely SUCK at waiting. And I, among all who walk the earth today, am THE WORST at it.

Somewhere between the status updates and the twitter burps and the entire internet fitting snugly in out pocketses, we have lost the art of waiting. Lost it all gone. (Wait Loss!) I was realizing, as I thought upon that sunrise later, that I serve a God who refuses to cheapen Himself in such a way... a God who absolutely will not reveal large parts of Himself to me until I learn to know Him as wait worthy. There is no refresh button on Him. No hurrying things along. Only through patient seeking will I truly begin to know Him.

Oh poop, I am SO bad at this.

However, in the times that I have been forced to wait, or the rare instances where I found the discipline to do so, I have always been immeasurably blessed. I think even of LAST advent, when I felt my unborn son stretching against my tight skin. He was worth the wait! Or I think of the time that I took a step of faith and waited for God to rescue me from depression without running straight to the medication that was being held out to me. He met me there! He healed me! I think also of my husband, who would not be playing guitar on the other side of this living room right now if I had not waited for God's promise even when I couldn't see it through the smothering pain.

Oh, He is SO worthy of wait. He can be trusted with that invested time. He will never disappoint. He is Faithful and Good and we will never wait in vain. Never never no never ever. We will NEVER wait in vain.

My prayer for myself during this Advent season is that I would learn to trust Him enough to wait on Him in full expectancy, in full hope, and (yes!) in full joy... knowing that He will meet me there every. single. time.

A Pregnant Advent.

34 weeks! woot!

There has been something so incredibly special and significant about being pregnant during the Advent season this year. Advent lasts the four Sundays before Christmas, and is the season of eagerly awaiting and preparing for celebrating the birth of Jesus.

The word advent literally means "coming". And, boy oh boy, can I relate.

As we sing and talk of God coming to us as a helpless baby, it has been amazing to have the tangible example of how fragile and small the God of the universe became for us busily poking me in the ribs and stretching against my skin as I go about my day.

Is there anything more helpless than an unborn baby? Even... an embryo? To think that the God who governs all things at all times became an embryo for us... Was painfully born into filth and manure- roommates with a donkey and sleeping in the most humble box imaginable: a trough for the slop and food of musty barnyard beasts.

What a shocking King. A King who nurses at Mary's breast and intimately knows our pains and frustrations as human beings in this world. My kind of hero! Unexpected and seemingly unqualified. These heroes have the greatest stories, don't they?

God could have chosen to send His Son down to us from the clouds in a glorious light- expelling all rumors against His deity and authority. He could have appointed Him to instant power and plowed through His to-do list with nary an opposition. But who can relate to that? How will that kind of a God help the prostitute or the addicted father or the suicidal teen? The very people God came to rescue?

All of this to say... I'm thankful for this baby inside of me and this season. It has been a very poignant way for me to reconnect with the God I sometimes find myself too lazy to love. I'm falling in love with what He did for me all over again. Is it possible that God was thinking of me and my heart while His son was stretching against Mary's womb 2000 years ago? Knowing that this Jesus could speak to MY mother's heart about God's love like nothing else ever could?

I think it's just crazy enough to be true... Just unbelievable enough to embrace with every fiber of my being.

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Here's a song I wrote a few years back about all of this. I think I may have posted it on this site EONS ago, but I thought I'd throw it up here again in case you want to hear it...

Humble Baby by emery clark

Also, here's a little Christmas song that Chris & I recorded this year! Hope you like it, too. It's one of my favorites.

Have Yourself A Merry Little C by emery clark & chris clark

To download either of these songs, click here.

Oh, I hope you like them!