Waiting

I hate to wait: in a store, on the phone, in traffic. I can get so grumpy waiting; so grumbly and mean. Just ask my kids.

The reason I hate to wait—the reason most of us I would assume hate to wait—is it feels like a colossal waste of time. We lead busy lives these days in which we are accustomed to moving and doing; to getting things done so we can get more things done! When we are waiting, we are doing nothing which, I know from experience, is hard to do.

What Advent has taught me though, in what has turned out to be a year of waiting—waiting for a job, for the economy to pick-up, for my bathroom renovations to be finished—is that there is a time for waiting; a season for standing still as well as for moving forward; for being as well as for doing. More importantly, it has taught me that when I am waiting I am not doing nothing, instead I am expecting, anticipating, preparing —or being prepared—for what is to come.

The tulip bulbs I planted in my garden several weeks ago are waiting; deep in the ground they are getting ready for spring which seems as far off this snowy December morning as anything could be. But while they are waiting they are growing. In the stillness of the earth, through a process that is a mystery to me, they are becoming the beautiful flowers that they were meant to be all along. And so too, I hope, am I.