What are we waiting for? Ah, the virtue of patience is once again called to mind as the season of Advent brings us ever closer to the day we celebrate as the birth of Jesus.
Every pregnant woman and family waits for a period close to nine months for new life to be born into their family. A time of anticipation; a time of dreaming; a time of preparation for there is much to be done before the day of the newborn’s arrival is at hand.
Each type of waiting brings about different things for us. Throughout our lives we will over and over again experience times of anticipation. When we are young and small, we anticipate being adult and all-grown-up. There will be many years, probably at least eighteen, before that comes to pass. And even then, we will have much important growing up to do and it still may be more years before the mantle of adulthood properly fits our shoulders. It takes time. One step at a time.
I was always taller than most my friends during my childhood years. Well-meaning relatives often stated, “She is big for her age” or “She looks older than she is.” Somehow those remarks carried a tinge of meaning I perhaps misinterpreted. I heard these remarks to mean I should be something other than I was. So I waited for my own adulthood to arrive where age blurred the lines and no one would say, “She is tall for being 21.” A child’s thought perhaps, but I looked toward the day where age would not distinguish me for being too much of what I am.
Other happier times of childhood anticipation certainly was waiting for Christmas, waiting for graduation, waiting for vacation fun with cousins, waiting for mom’s great-smelling dinners from the oven or her fresh baked bread, with the aromas filling the house; waiting for my first date. As I got nearer to being an adult, I waited for my first job, my true love and marriage, our first child; I waited for our first home, I waited weight loss and management over and over again. I waited to see who our children would become, who they would choose as partners in their lives and what passion would fill their souls for the gifts they would bring to the world.
I waited for seasons to pass. I waited for problems to be solved. I waited for mysteries of life to reveal themselves to me. And for this I am grateful. As a young child, I read all the Nancy Drew mysteries, but that is not the genre I chose as an adult. I chose non-fiction that filled many book shelves throughout my I favored biographies and particularly autobiographies. I developed a strong taste that started at a young age for spirituality and mystical studies of the saints and beliefs in the time of our ancestors of long ago. Human psychology and development peaked in my young adult life and never ceased. I sought to discover the mysteries of life in these books much more often than in a fiction novel.
The trouble waiting presents is that it is focused on the future. What I had to learn was to keep my focus on the present, do my work, praying, hoping, and believing in the present time. When I could keep my eye on the ball in the day I was living, my dreams or worries of the future would take care of themselves; and when the conditions were right, manifestation would occur. That could be either a deeply desirous dream in which I could rejoice. Or it could be some future problem waiting to appear from my jumbled and mixed up thoughts in the present.
So, what do I await now? Most of the time, I await for the day I am living in, my part of doing good in it and my recognition of both the need and the blessings I come in contact with in this very day.
Napkinwriter 