Published in quality newspapers on December 3, 2009
Waiting. We spend a good part of our lives doing it. Efficiency experts have quantified our waiting and found that on average we spend five years of our lives waiting in lines and six months sitting at red lights. Add up all the other waiting we do and it takes up an annoyingly significant chunk of our time here on earth. Surely whoever said “good things come to those who wait,” could never have predicted the amount of waiting required in the 21st Century.
There’s another sort of waiting that is more than an annoyance. It takes a toll on us physically. It knots our stomachs, furrows our brows, and keeps us awake at night. Sometimes this waiting lasts only a few minutes, like waiting for that state trooper to get out of his car after we’ve been pulled over – ticket or just a warning? We wait anxiously for a few hours before a phone call lets us know that our traveling loved ones have safely navigated rain-slick roads and made it home okay. Fortunately this sort of waiting is temporary. When the waiting is over, the worry dissipates like steam from a tea kettle.
Waiting can also be an ever-present, yet unwelcome companion, with us every second of every day for days on end and fate hangs in the balance. We wait for the test results from the lab. We wait for a son or daughter to safely return from war. We wait for that email letting us know we got the job.
We’re now in the season of waiting, the holidays. We do lots of waiting this time of year. Even children seem to up their waiting quota. They wait for out-of-town cousins to arrive. They wait for Santa’s visit. They wait for presents to be opened. They wait for dad to run to the drug store to get AAA batteries.
During the holidays a good deal of waiting occurs in and around the kitchen. Thanksgiving, with a houseful of people awaiting the meal, strikes the tone for the holiday season. The turkey is the culinary pace car of holiday cooking, cooking for hours not minutes and setting the standard for much of the slowed-down food preparation that will occur in the coming month.
Even those for whom slice-and-bakes will do during the rest of the year, will break out the Betty Crocker Cookbook for the tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe and spend the better part of an evening mixing, rolling, cutting, baking, smelling, decorating, and finally eating cookies that were worth the wait.
It is tempting to think of waiting differently than other aspects of life, as the empty space separating one thing from another. Is waiting just the gap between what was and what will be; or does the waiting have value in and of itself?
Waiting, if we let it, can help us focus. It can push aside all the clutter in our lives so that we zero in on the object of our waiting. Some of us attend churches that observe Advent. Advent is all about the waiting, four full weeks of anticipation and preparation. The themes of Advent - hope, love, joy, peace, and celebration – encourage us to let waiting become more than a mere holding pattern.
I don’t know about you but I’m not good at waiting. I work 65 hours a week. I’ve got family and civic commitments. I don’t have time to wait. Yet waiting doesn’t seem to know or care how important I think I am. Normally when I’m forced to wait, my blood pressure goes up and my mind fills with all that I could be doing.
During this holiday season I’m going to try and change all that and if waiting is difficult for you maybe you should join with me. As I find myself waiting over the next few weeks, whether in a check-out line, in busy kitchen, or in a quite sanctuary, I’m going to try and let the waiting teach me something, perhaps about hope and love and joy and peace and celebration. Maybe good things will come to those who wait.
Scott--This is such a beautiful piece!
Vic
Posted by: victoria wesseler | 12/10/2009 at 07:12 AM