Waiting, anticipating

We’re making our way steadily through advent – the season of waiting and anticipating Christmas. We decorated our Christmas tree yesterday, have started wrapping presents and (to the horror of my mum) put up lights in the tree outside our house. I love this time of year and although my pregnant feet are aching, I love all the preparations.

Advent is particularly special this year because we’re anticipating the birth of our baby. Of course, we’re thinking about the day the baby is born, but only rarely as it still seems a bit unreal. There are many steps along the way that we’re looking forward to though: the next being our twenty week scan. In another ten days we will be able to see our baby again and find out whether it is a boy or a girl. Time does strange things while you’re waiting and it feels like it has been a couple of weeks until our scan for weeks and weeks now. It seemed close last week, but with more than a week to go it feels like the day is stretching away from us.

However, like Christmas, we know that the day will come. And though we don’t know for certain when the baby will be born, we know that we won’t still be waiting in June. In this way, the Book and the Baby differ.

Wild Rose has gone through its first round of submissions to publishers. The date for response has come and gone with three rejections and no offers. The rejections have been complimentary and encouraging, but they are rejections nonetheless. Eve White will send the manuscript out on another round in the New Year when I hope that some New Year optimism will encourage someone to make me an offer. Waiting for these responses is not as enjoyable as waiting for Christmas or for the baby. There is no guarantee that they will come or that they will include an offer to publish.

Advent is a happy time because the day of Jesus’ birth will come, as will the day of our baby’s birth. If only the arrival of an offer was as certain.