Tag: waiting

Between Points A and B

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Well, we’re still in America– not where we expected to be by this date. Many people have told us encouragingly that there must be something else we’re supposed to do here before we go back to India… otherwise we’d already be there, right? There are definitely meaningful and important things that have happened during our stay, but these days we’re mostly feeling bored and looking for useful ways to fill time.

I don’t think there is anything left that I’m supposed to do. What’s becoming clear to me is that the challenging invitation in front of me while I wait isn’t actually to do anything, but rather to learn how to stop doing. Perhaps the reason I’m still here (besides the incompetence of the people handling our visa applications) is that I’m being given an opportunity to learn how to truly wait for something.

I don’t wait well. I’ve rarely ever waited for anything in my life. Because waiting means embracing emptiness inside of oneself; living in the actual tension of not knowing what will happen next, and perhaps even reaching a point of spiritual indifference from which one can joyfully embrace whatever answer or circumstance arises.

I don’t usually embrace emptiness. I run from it– which is why most of the time my “waiting” is actually an active process of filling my mind with all sorts of plans and counter-plans and contingencies, thinking ahead in both directions to prepare myself for every possible outcome before it happens.

I spend time forecasting how long I think it will take for whatever I am awaiting to arrive.

I count down days.

I imagine how I’ll feel when it happens.

I imagine my response if something unexpected happens, and then explore what each and every one of those things might be, so that I will expect them if they happen.

Creating my own plans and answers is no substitute for patiently waiting and receiving the plans and answers that God has for me. But there’s a paradox here, because as human beings we are co-creators and co-conspiritors with God, which means that we work cooperatively with Him to create the future. We have an important role to play in shaping what kind of person we will become and what kind of world we will live in! Where we delude ourselves is in thinking that we can actually create ourselves or our future independently of God.

Rather than action plans and will-power, our growth ultimately depends on our decisions to receive grace or not. Will we accept God’s invitations in our life? Will we recognize God’s activity; push into that realm of weakness and vulnerability that brings us closer to God? Even a thwarted plan or an unexpected delay can be a grace to us if we allow it to be.

So we can resist and kick and scream and slow down the process of our own growth, but we cannot engineer that process to ensure our preferred timing and style. Waiting is not merely a formula of putting in a set amount of time and effort to get a predictable or desired result. It is always an opening of ourselves to the unknown; a giving of consent for our own expectations and plans to be subverted and changed, and for new possibilities to come into existence. Waiting is a patient, sustained yes to God which humbly lays aside our own desires—not disregarding them, but accepting the possibility of giving them up in exchange for something we would not have chosen for ourselves.

I am in that in-between space now, trying to wait with open hands. Amidst my boredom, confusion, frustration, and uncertainty about the future, I am trying to learn how to take hold of the grace that is offered and to allow it to change me. It isn’t easy and I don’t always take it, but as many times as I get wound up in anxiety or bids for control, I find that I am allowed to wander back and try again. I find that grace is offered to me again and again.

Advent

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          Two years ago, we were waiting to move to India for the first time. This advent season, we are waiting for visas to be processed so that we can return to India. There are certainly times that seem more clearly marked than others by uncertainty or waiting, but the truth is that Advent speaks to our perpetual life experience of living in the present and waiting for the future to unfold. No matter what season of life we are in, we harbor hopes, fears, and expectations in our hearts; we turn excitement, possibilities, or dread over and over in our minds. And advent speaks to that tension of suspended possibilities; of hoping and preparing but not knowing how it all will turn out.

I used to think it was a bit artificial to go through the motions of supposedly waiting in suspense for something that we all knew was coming in a predictable form on a predictable schedule. After all, Advent culminates in Christmas every year. No surprises there. But Advent is not just the season of counting down to Christmas day—it’s also the long vigil for God’s arrival. We are waiting for God to be born in our world, to grow in our lives, to proclaim peace in every painful situation of conflict and confusion that we find ourselves tangled up in. And the truth is that while we may have our own ideas of what that will mean, we don’t know exactly what it will look like when it happens.

Advent, a wise priest told me last week, is the spiritual art of waiting for the unexpected: preparing ourselves for what we know while remaining open to the unknown. If we aren’t on the lookout for Jesus, we’ll be caught off guard by his arrival in our lives. But if all of our careful planning fools us into believing that we can predict and control the future, then that rigorous preparation may actually prevent us from embracing him when he comes! Our assumptions may prevent us from accepting the surprising ways that Christ chooses to incarnate in our lives and in our world. It’s a delicate balance of planning and not planning; preparation and spontaneity.