When Waiting is All We Can Do
Though I try to keep a straight face, I’ve always inwardly raised my eyebrows when people say “Good things happen to those who wait.” I get it, of course. Good things, beautiful things, delicious things, good books, good meals, good relationships – I can’t think of much that is good that doesn’t require time, and with time, waiting. I just think it’s a lot easier to tell someone to wait for whatever good thing they are hoping for than it is to actually do so myself. I much prefer doing something, almost anything, to simply waiting. Idling when I can be moving is difficult.
Many years ago, when I was expecting our first child, I was sent home by my doctor almost a full week before her due date to “get ready.”
“Don’t you know you are about to have this baby?” he queried, shocked I was not in full labor.
“Not really,” I replied. “But come to think of it, I had to grab hold of the cart while shopping at Target a few days ago for newborn diapers. The feeling only lasted a few seconds and I didn’t stop.”
“Well, go to your office, clear off your desk, and tell your colleagues you won’t be back. You are far along and could go into labor any minute. Get ready.”
Exuberant, I went to my office, passed off my unfinished work, and left a message for my husband: Get. Home. Now.
We waited out the afternoon. Nothing. That evening, looking to pass the time, we went to an engrossing, suspenseful movie. When we exited the theatre, my husband looked at me and said, “Wow! I could hardly breathe during parts of that. Oh! I almost forgot! Did you have any contractions while we were inside?”
“How would I know?” I replied.
I spent the weekend taking it easy. I rested on the couch, finished packing my bag for the hospital, puttered around, made sure everything was ready in the nursery. Every twinge, anything stronger than an eyelash flicker made me think, “Is this IT?”
I was miserable and grew more miserable as the hours passed. By the time Monday rolled around I had had enough of waiting and went back to work. Our firstborn, a daughter, was born 5 days later.
For people keyed for action, the wait for good things – or those things you can reasonably anticipate will be good – is a see-saw type of motion. You do a little, you wait a little. You tackle the next hill, work to quell fears that might derail you, work through mushrooming details of some big event. You wait some more. You chip away at it. It makes us feel good to think we have some control over what is happening in our lives. We can do this. We are doing this. It's tiring, but the waiting is accompanied by sparking moments of exhilaration.
In contrast, waiting for hard things – that which you know may not turn out well, things that are not easily resolved, longstanding conflicts – drains. The long, slow slough of waiting for someone to, say, get well, sucks life and energy and hope like a slowly leaking inner tube. The despair, fear, and despondency that accompany us as we wait for hard things to come to their conclusion gives the lie to personal strength. We are painfully reminded our agency is but an illusion, our self-control and willpower wisps of our imagination. Eventually, our cloud castles come crashing down and we are brought to our knees with the humbling, solid-wall-awful truth: We are not in charge here. We are not in charge of ourselves, not in the way we like to think. And we certainly are not in charge of anyone else.
I’ve thought a lot about waiting since before Easter, when I heard again the story of Mary pouring that bottle of expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet, wiping the dirt and grime with her hair – such an emotional display of love and gratitude to the One who had incomprehensibly restored her brother, Lazarus, to life. I listened again as Jesus rebuked Judas, the disciple who criticized Mary for not selling the perfume and giving the money to the poor. And I found myself wondering, “What is at the root of Mary’s actions? Of Judas’s? And what does this have to do with me?”
Slowly, Judas’s inability to wait with Jesus dawned on me. Jesus saw that Judas’s condemnation issued from a heart of stone, one that was cold toward acts of generosity, faith, and love. Judas would never have stooped low enough to emulate Mary’s simple devotion. He was more interested in chasing pretense, the grand gesture of changing the world by giving it all away – everything, that is, except his heart, his mind, his pride, his need to be big and do the big thing.
Judas did not have time to wait. He figured he had waited long enough to see how Jesus might change the world. It was time to get on with it. To wait out the mystery, to hold with the pain, sorrow, and confusion of what Jesus was doing required something Judas did not have. When Jesus told his disciples he would not change the world by conquering it with power but by the arduous work of self-sacrifice and service, Judas took matters into his own hands.
And then there was Mary, pouring perfume (maybe leftover from the first burial of her brother?), also not knowing what to expect. She had probably heard Jesus say something like, “My time is getting short. It won’t be long now.”
I am sure Mary was full of questions. Was he really going to die? Soon? Later? At the hands of whom? And what would happen to his followers? What about his claims to be the Messiah? It’s hard to change the world if you are dead.
No one could stop what was about to take place. No one fully understood what Jesus was facing. Mary only knew it was going to be hard – and whatever it was – she was going to have to endure it. Judas stomped out and had Jesus arrested. Mary stooped down and gave what she had: gratitude, friendship, love, sorrow, support, time, patience, energy, all wrapped in the kindness of washing his feet. She offered Jesus what his disciples had been unable to give him only a few nights before in the garden when he asked them to sit, watch, and stay awake with him for a while.
I don’t have perfume to spread over anyone’s feet and anyway, perfume is not the point. But I want to be courageous and kind and generous and true enough to wait with family and friends who are engaged in their own long struggles. I am surrounded by people who have waited a long time – some valiantly and some less so – with fear and depression and disbelief and financial distress and grief and resentment and impatience and regret and illness and addiction and broken dreams and death. We all are. I don’t know anyone who is not waiting for the resolution of some difficult situation, be it with family, friends, neighbors, or people we don’t even know but who nevertheless impact our lives. I, too, wait, to see how Christ will right the wrongs I carry, lay kindness over my weaknesses, heal my inner places of hurt.
Sometimes, the most we can do is wait with those who wait. Pour over them the costly perfume of our thought and time, our attention, our support. In the end, it may be the most we can give: the balm of human recognition, the gift of ourselves, even when the giving is costly.