I don’t know about you friend, but I find waiting to be such a difficult task sometimes.
And yet, waiting is one of the most normal experiences of life.
We all experience waiting in this life - and each experience of it is so unique to us as an individual.
We wait for - the traffic lights and doctor offices, fast food drive throughs and positive pregnancy tests, acceptance letters and life partners, test results and growing up, grocery checkout lines and walking loved ones to the next life.
Sometimes waiting is mysterious and joyful, while other times it feels tiring and lonely.
When we speak of waiting sometimes, there is this sense that it is something to done to, or against us - it can imply that we are stuck. And yet, if the living God is always in relationship to us and moving in and through our lives, are we really stuck even in our waiting?
During my spiritual direction appointment in December, my director shared with me the following words from the beloved Henri Nouwen on waiting:
“Most of us consider waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. But there is none of this passivity in Scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing.
If we wait in the conviction that a seed has been planted and that something has already begun, it changes the way we wait. Active waiting implies being fully present to the moment with the conviction that something is happening where we are and that we want to be present to it.
A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, believing that the moment is the moment.”
Something scared, holy, and transforming happens in your waiting, whatever kind it is - because God is there with you in it, meeting you in whatever it is.
No matter the waiting right now in your life, God is there - swimming deeply in all the intricacies of it with you. Because the presence of God is the present moment.
What waiting in your life feels messy and stretchy right now? Can you find the Divine presence there - what does it look and feel like?
In the depths of your heart as we continue into 2023, let us make these words of King David our very own: “I have waited, waited for the Lord, and he stooped toward me and heard my cry” (Psalm 40).
Here I am, in my waiting, God.
Meet me there.