Words We Are Living With ~ Wait

For over a month now, we have become reacquainted with words we usually try to avoid or keep a safe, social distance from...today's word is, "Wait".

Woven into many of us is a loathe of "waiting".

I always try to find the shortest line (which ironically moves the slooooooowest).
I tap my steering wheel and fidget with the radio at every red light.
At doctor's offices I stare at my phone like a magic portal to another world because God knows I am never going to touch one of the magazines in waiting room again.  Ever.
I sigh.
I fume with frustration.
I think of myself as being too busy (read too important) to wait.

But waiting is a part of life.  Even in a world of instantaneous communication and microwave meals. 

Right now, we are waiting for the all clear sign to flee from our homes knowing that it is now safe to move about our lives again.

I believe there is a spiritual practice of waiting.  We all admit that we are too busy.  Remember before COVID 19 how we all had a litany of things that were clamoring for our time and we'd try to compare (even compete) as to who was busy?

Why did we do that again?

Was life somehow better when we were exhausted?

The slower pace of life has reminded me of the joy of cleaning something in my home.
The slower pace of life has rekindled in me a slower, less frantic (read less stressed out) way of being.
The slower pace of life has given me more time with my family who I always say are #1, but rarely does my calendar preach/proclaim that truth.

Not to say waiting will ever be at the top of my to-do list.  But waiting feels different.

It is now a space to pause, to breathe and to be.
It allows me to feel my feelings.  To acknowledge that I might be anxious as I await a test or frustrated at the lack of compassion or sad at those who have lost their life due to this virus. 

I think about how many years I let illnesses like the flu or surgery rarely stop or slow me down.  Now I wait in that difficult space of knowing that things are going to be different.  I don't have a crystal ball or know the future...any guesses at this point are bound to be a mixture of truth and folly.  But if we can wait...listen...breathe and be...I believe that is how traces of God's grace get a word in edgewise.

May grace and God's love be with you now more than ever.