Expectant Waiting

Mother's know all about it. Nine months of waiting and wondering and falling in love. Then all those years of teaching and loving and praying. 

Advent is the season of expectant waiting. It is the celebration, in many ways, of Mary's willingness to serve without fully understanding what she was being asked to do.

I live in a world that wants instant gratification. Total explanations. Total preparations. What exactly is going to happen. And it better not alter from what I've been told. 

That kind of expectation slinks in innocuously. It's insidious. It creeps in and takes over my life. It starts out harmlessly enough. "Your pizza will be ready in 15 minutes or it's free!" I'll get what I want when I want it or it will be free.

And over time I've come to expect that in everything. This depression. These flashbacks. These negative thought patterns. I've identified them and done the prayers and the therapy. I did my part, so what's taking so long? And where's my free pizza?

Expectant waiting. 

For whatever reason, I expected there to be a cathartic moment when it would all just lift and fly away. Don't get me wrong. There have been some cathartic moments. Some of it has lifted and flown away, but there are still seasons of depression, some panic, an occasional flashback, and all with a heaping dose of guilt for not being over this struggle.

And I read Emily Wierenga's post this morning, and I can't get that image of Nelson Mandela out of my head, waiting in prison for 27 years, so long he forgot how to tie his shoes.

So I wait. Not for my free pizza, but for the gift that is Advent while realizing we are all waiting, and it is in the waiting that we learn and grow the most.

linking up with Imperfect Prose