Are you waiting?
I am. For a lot of things, I suppose, but for some very specific things as well.
Are you waiting anxiously? I have been. In my view, this waiting is unnecessary. I’m ready to MOVE, I’m ready for an answer and I do mean now. I don’t want to be stuck in this place of in-between-ness, unsure and unsettled and a bit lonely.
Where is God in the waiting? Is he withholding, punishing, ignoring me and my requests? (NO.) Is he too distant to care? (NO.) Am I asking the wrong questions, praying the wrong prayers, wanting the wrong things? (Probably not.)
The thing is, while I’m waiting, I’ve discovered that God is IN the waiting. He wants me unsure and unsettled and a little bit lonely. He wants my prayers. He wants me to come in close, and to find my sure footing, my settled-ness, and my companionship in him.
When I am moving along comfortably, I never stop at the in-between. These pauses have been pure annoyance to me, if I’m being honest. I’m tapping my foot and peering all around me, imagining every possible scenario and outcome.
I’m discovering how to just BE in the waiting. I’m a doer. From the top of my head to the tips of my toes. But in the silence of the waiting, I’ve been reminded over and over that I am a human BEing, not a human DOing.
Catch that? Just BEING … that’s like speaking a foreign language to me. But when I stopped the toe tapping and the anxious peering around, when I let myself relax, and my mind unfurl, and my stomach unclench, I realized how very very tired I am. I don’t have any more DO in me, so I tried to just BE for awhile. It’s been quiet and restful and while I am still waiting, I am doing so expectantly (not anxiously), and relaxing in the right-now. The in-between. The pause. It is a sacred interlude, really – a break between the before and the after.
We see the before and it might look like an unholy mess. The after is of course completely unknown feels and looks like the Last Frontier – remote and dangerous.
But you know what? I have NO IDEA what the “after” will be. I cannot control these things I am waiting on, not a bit (or I would have done it, trust me). If I spend all my time worrying about the after, though, I miss the rest of the in-between.
I’m just not ready to go charging into the next thing yet, and God knows that more than I do. And so I wait, and I hear him call me Child, and he beckons me to come close. THIS is what fills the loneliness. HE will make sure that I don’t stumble and fall, and he wants to keep me a bit unsettled and a little off balance because that’s when I lean into him. (I’ve got a lot to learn about that.)
This is a bit short for me (some of you are shouting, HALLELUJAH!) but that seems to be the end. For now. Waiting, after all, looks pretty unremarkable. Boring, even. But oh so much is happening inside my heart and soul as I rest, that I am content to stay here for as long as it’s good for me.
Waiting in hope,
Angie
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