Not Ready

It's fitting that there is a birth approaching (commemoration of a birth... don't want to make everyone think I'm pregnant twice in a week), because there is some scrambling going on. Forget about my promises of getting everything done before Advent. Yes, yes, the shopping may have been done-- but there's so much more than shopping, isn't there?

No matter how hard I have tried to get everything ready, set aside and prepared for both of my own births, there has been some last minute work to get everything ready. And the truth is, you're never really ready, are you? The Biblical birth story makes my last homebirth look like a cakewalk-- Mary and Joseph certainly didn't have a birth checklist, let alone a sanitary birth bed. God With Us broke into humanity in a moment of unreadiness-- I can almost hear Joseph and Mary asking, "You did call ahead to make sure there was room in the inn, didn't you?" to one another. God works despite our own best efforts not because of them.

So here I am. The birth is taking place tomorrow night--albeit in a distant stable in Bethlehem-- and I'm scrambling. Some things are coming together. I finished a doll for Zosia, Lily has a vest and if my fingers can knit as fast as they type I have hope of finishing a vest for Zosia too. But the truth is, I'm not really ready-- and I'm learning that that's okay.