I sat across the small table from a good friend in Prince Street Cafe and I held the mug of coffee in both hands. I stared into its dark depths and I told him it still feels like a year of waiting, a year of not-quite-yet. I can’t say it’s an ache but it feels like things are holding their breathe. I’m not naturally patient. I’ve never found it easy to wait.
“That’s your word for the year,” my friend said. “You talk about that every time we meet. Wait.”
Then he smiled and said he gets upset when people are praying for him and ask God that he’ll have patience. He doesn’t want patience! He wants to move forward! He wants to take the bull by the horns! He laughed.
“I want to tell them they can hang on to their prayers, if they’re going to pray that I have patience.”
I know that feeling.
Waiting involves embracing the silence, something I’ve been trying to get better at. Sit in the present, and for just a moment let go of my hopes and dreams, my plans and strategies, the web I’m weaving in my mind. Let the wind of this present moment clear all those cobwebs. I want to turn down the volume on this noisy world, recapture my own senses, let them find life again.
Is that, I wonder, the essence of waiting? Finding life again?
I would ask myself, “What are you waiting for?” If I was waiting, I would probably be waiting for other people to lead me. Or catch up to me. When I wait, I’m avoiding the power I have to take control and make decisions. Not sure if that’s just me or just a negative view of waiting…
Maybe there is a difference between waiting and stalling. The Good Book says “Those that wait on the Lord will renew their strength,” so maybe there’s a vast difference between waiting on God and waiting on other things?
Ok, I see what you’re saying. I think I’m more comfortable with the word “watching”. Waiting for me is associate with a more passive role. I see some verses translate the word “wait” as “hope” (or vice versa)… That makes sense to me.
It’s in the waiting that I am learning to hear God, to listen to my heart, to learn to trust the next step. It’s uncomfortable and sometimes it feels foolish. But I find that transformation happens in the letting go and in the waiting.
Yes and yes.