some thoughts on being asked to wait

This is something I do not like to do. 

Not for new opportunities. Not for friends running behind schedule. Not for the next season of Downton Abbey.  Not for anything, really. 

But for the past year, this has been the pattern of my life:  waiting for doors to open, to find clarity about a career or grad school, waiting to feel like I have a direction or a purpose behind where I’m headed.  One year ago I graduated from college.  And every moment since then has felt like some sort of breathless anticipation, waiting for the next thing that would “determine the rest of my life”.  It has been 365 days nearly, and this year old anticipation some days turns to despair. 

Some days I want to tell God that I hate this – this waiting.  Some days I want to ask Him why he just isn’t showing up how I’d like Him to.  Some days I don’t like Him very much, for asking me to be patient.  For asking me to wake up every morning without direction and to do what’s prepared for me in that day, and then to wake up and do it again. 

But I do it.  In my season of waiting, I live.  I anticipate.  And I pray with the force of heaven against bitterness, against the lie that in my waiting I am abandoned, and that in my waiting God is withholding any good thing from me. 

Waiting, the Lord is telling me, is the best He has for me now.  And so I pray not to hate it. 

Appropriately, I think, these reflections come to me in the season of Advent.  Because this is a season where we remember that we will never stop waiting as long as we live on this earth.  There is never a point where we should abandon our breathless longing for heaven, for redemption, for Jesus to come and be among us.  Because everyday we will need him more.  And everyday we will wake up, live our lives, and go about the work of being human all in the middle of waiting for our savior to arrive.  We do this knowing that he will show up.  And then He will.  He does.  And the next morning we begin our anticipation again, once more needy, once more broken and earnest for Him. 

Jesus knew what it was to wait.  To hang in agonizing pain and to call out to a father who would not answer him immediately.  This waiting – it was the most beautiful thing.  It was the most good, and it was the most difficult. 

Perhaps every single day, we are asked to wait on small things.  On a new job.  On a desire or a wish.  But we are foolish to think that we wait because we are unloved.  Even as we wait in a broken world and we hurt for the things we just want here and now, we are being prepared for what is going to be our ultimate good. We are asked to long for a day when death falls away, when sorrow is no more, when God’s promises to bring us to completion are made true.  We are asked to wait trusting that He has our best interests at heart.  Because He loves us.