I
waited 10 years from the time I knew I wanted to get married until the day I
got married.
I’ve
been waiting over 10 years to have a child.
I’ve
been waiting two weeks for a certain package to come in the mail.
I’ve
been waiting for a month (and will continue for several more months) for warmer
weather to come.
I’ve
been anxiously waiting for 24 hours now to hear if a dear friend will pull
through a dangerous injury she sustained yesterday.
I’ve
also been waiting for two nerve-racking days to hear if the offer on the house
we want has been accepted.
Sometimes
it seems as if life is merely a series of events, with periods of fear and nothingness
in between...a “quick succession of busy nothings” (to quote Jane Austen’s
character Fanny Price in Mansfield Park). Sometimes we know exactly what we’re waiting for, sometimes
we don’t, and sometimes we’re surprised with something unexpected we never
wanted, and have to accept a new reality or wait until “normal” comes
back.
The
problem is that the best parts of our lives happen while we’re waiting – while
we’re moving from something to something else. And if we’re not aware of the Lord’s work in our lives, of our
surroundings, or if we don’t keep a positive outlook, we miss a whole lot of
important, saint-making opportunities in the ‘down time’.
In
his talk entitled “The Spirituality of Waiting”, Fr. Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest
who lived in Canada, underscored the importance of active and open-ended
waiting. We think we know what we want, and we tell God just as we see it. And then it seems as if we can do
nothing but stand by idly and wait.
Not so, says Nouwen.
“Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. The bus is late. You cannot do anything about it, so you have to sit there and just wait. […] But there is none of that passivity in Scripture. Those who are waiting [ie. Simeon, Anna, Elizabeth, Mary, etc.] are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be fully present to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening.” (Emphasis mine)
There
is always more to our lives than we can imagine. In every moment we may be called to some specific work,
especially in those annoying delays we didn’t expect. Perhaps that bus is late because the Lord wishes for you to
smile and talk with the fellow passenger who is at the stop with you. Perhaps your conversation is the only
kindness this man will experience all day and it will make him rethink the hurt
he plans to do himself later.
But
there’s more. We could be actively
waiting for something very specific to happen, and when it doesn’t, we despair
of the Lord’s love and providence for our lives. Nouwen addresses this:
“Much of our waiting is filled with [concrete] wishes: “I wish the weather would be better. I wish the pain would go.” For this reason, a lot of our waiting is not open-ended. Instead, our waiting is a way of controlling the future. We want the future to go in a very specific direction, and if this does not happen we are disappointed and can even slip into despair.”
But
it is God, and only God, who rules our past, present and future, because he
knows what we need better than we know ourselves. Nouwen points out that to wait, actively and open-endedly,
is an “enormously radical attitude toward life” as is “giving up control over
our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us
according to His love and not according to our fear.”
The
important thing to ask yourself is, “Where is my focus?” If our minds and hearts are full of
that which is lacking, we sink into dark places, like St. Peter who took his
eyes off the Lord and floundered in the stormy waters. But when Peter’s eyes were fixed on the
Lord, he did something extraordinary – he got out of the boat and walked on
water! This change in outlook can
make the difference between ordinary and extraordinary in our own lives as well. It means having patience with the
periods of ‘down time’ – those annoying pauses in between events - and trusting
that when we stay with that pain, whatever it is, we will birth something new,
something beyond our expectations or imaginings.
This
is waiting with true hope. Hope is
more than just wanting our wishes to come true. “Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but
fulfilled according to the promises [of God] and not just according to our
wishes.” What has God promised you
in your life? Where has he been faithful
to you in the past? These times
are all gifts given to you by the Lord, and opportunities for you to strengthen
your trust and hope in him.
Simone
Weil, a Jewish writer, once said, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the
foundation of the spiritual life.”
If this is the case, I’m failing miserably at my spiritual life. The beautiful thing is that the Lord
keeps giving me opportunities to better myself – waiting for a child, for news
of my friend, for a package, for warmer weather – to prove his unending love
and providence for me. I have so
many opportunities to wait for Him.
What makes all the difference is how I’m doing it.
Wow, Sarah. This is amazing. I will definitely have to come back to this in the next few weeks as I wait for baby to show up. Prayers for your friend and for your housing situation.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. What a wonderful and insightful post. I especially loved the line about life being a series of events with periods of nothingness and fear. How true and how much Christ needs to transform this in me!
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