Katie’s Musings: Waiting Nov 30, 2018 | Events This past Wednesday at family night, I posed a question: Advent is a time of waiting. So, what are you waiting for this Advent? Peace? (Same.) Understanding? (Oof, yep.) Patience? (Oy.) Patience is not actually my strong suit. Never has been, especially when I was a kid. On Christmas morning, mom and dad had to string a ribbon across the doorway of the hall so that my sister and I wouldn’t sneak out and spot our presents to early. I would always stand there, body is shaking in anticipation of the coming joy and delight that always accompanies Christmas morning. Sometimes we would try to come up with creative ways to crawl under the ribbon, one of us keeping watch and the other trying to be stealthy… and never succeeding. Then the parents would wake up and set us free, and we’d plow through our presents, leaving a mountain of wrapping paper and ribbon in our wake. And then, there was the inevitable let down when it was all done – that was fun. Now what? Waiting is tough, be it for medical test results or for a caramel brûlée latte from Starbucks. It’s particularly tough when the possibility of things to go horribly, unavoidably wrong is very real. The anticipation of bad things, wrong turns, always and inevitably worse than the end result. To me, the word waiting implies inaction. Complacency. An inability to have any impact on the results, so what’s the point in trying, really? However… A wiser-than-I person might say the waiting is actually the point. There are lessons to learn in the waiting: Patience, yes, but also acceptance of what is for the present and a clear path forward. Letting go of what you think or have been told should or shouldn’t be and learning to live in the “in-between.” Understanding that not right now doesn’t have to mean never… … that inaction doesn’t have to become complacency… … that waiting might just be another word for preparing for the light to come and fill every inch of your being… … that the tiny voice in your head telling you to “hold on,” might be the heralding of a new age, like whispering angels on the Bethlehem-like hillside of your brain… Huh. Maybe that wiser-than-I person is on to something with this waiting stuff. So… what are you waiting for this Advent?
