This morning as I was driving home from the gym, a song popped up in my playlist that caused me stillness and pause: “Prepare Him Room” by The Vigil Project. The rest, the quiet, the stillness that the season of Advent begs of us as Christians is in stark contrast from the world that now begins Black Friday sales well before the day after Thanksgiving, and has a frenzied pace with parties and preparation that has little to do with our hearts. Being in the University atmosphere also surrounds me with the urgency and stress of students who have finals, worry over passing the semester, and just yesterday, tears over the looming drop date.
Advent, the season of waiting, the season of preparing room in our hearts, is poetically perfect for our life right now as we also are waiting for a foster placement. After much prayer and preparation, we have re-opened our home for foster care. In a beautiful moment this past summer, the Lord planted upon my heart that all we need is love for a child to be foster parents again. We don’t need the perfect space, the perfect patience, the perfect family to make room for a child in our home and our hearts. We just need the capacity to love, and that love first came in a tiny baby in a manger over two thousand years ago. The baby Jesus we wait for is the same Jesus who waits for us to return to Him, over and over.
As we wait for a call for a foster child placement, I am deeply aware that I am waiting for a child that will be removed from their home because of trauma. The fact that the phone hasn’t rung is actually a grace. As we enter into the life of a child who at this moment is a stranger to us, we are entering into both the deep love that the Advent season reminds us of as well as the pain and suffering that Lent asks us to enter into.
The song by The Vigil Project reminds us to “Let every heart prepare Him room.” In the midst of the days leading up to the start of Advent, I want to still my mind and prepare my heart for room for both Jesus and for whatever little child will need our home and our love soon. The thought of Jesus and that unknown child both occupying space in my heart is truly comforting and tender. The child needs Him, and we can be bearers of His love.
The song also professes “All creation groans in labor waiting for our humble savior.” The groans of the labor of love should not be stress, hurry, Amazon deals, Black Friday shopping, or a perfectly decorated home. They should be aligned with Mary and Joseph, finding a place to rest and bring into this weary world the beautiful tiny baby, in humbleness and humility and with nothing but a starlit night and a bed of hay.
It is not yet Christmas. It is the season of Advent. Let us wait and truly prepare our hearts.
Debbie and her husband Justin have been married for 5 years. Debbie has two adult sons, and together she and Justin have fostered three children and adopted one. Both Debbie and her husband work for the Church. Debbie has worked in Campus Ministry for 24 years, and loves every minute of it! She thinks college students are some of the coolest people in the world! And they make great babysitters!
