My toddler eats a waffle for breakfast every morning. Despite that I have never failed to feed him, he inevitably wails for the entire two minutes it takes to pop up from the toaster. I sing and dance, trying to distract him. I explain that the waffle needs to cook. Nothing helps; the waiting is too painful.
There will come a day when the wailing will stop. He will grow in patience enough to pass those moments in peace. He will trust that I, his mother, have good things in store for him, that I have reasons for taking my time, that the promised waffle will come.
It seems so silly, the intensity of his tears and the look of desperation on his face. It’s hard not to laugh; some days I do. But then I wonder, is this what God sees when he looks at us in our impatience? Do we wail and despair over something He’s already promised us, something that’s already brewing?
Human beings are not adept at waiting.
In some ways, I wonder if this season of Advent is just a microcosm of our earthly lives. We rush around preparing for Christmas, and we get so off course. We allow menial things to overwhelm us. We lost sight of the purpose of this season: God’s Kingdom - already, and not yet.
Life is a preparation for Heaven, and in that sense, our entire lives are a season of waiting. We are waiting for the fullness and joy God has promised us, and in the scheme of eternity, our lives are a very short time to wait. But, how are we waiting? Are we trying to rush past the here and now, always onto the next?
I read recently that impatience ages us at a cellular level, which is actually kind of impressive, if you think about it. Our will to inhabit in the next moment actually pushes our cells into to theirs. But impatience is incompatible with joy.
The gift of patience is that it allows us to sink into the present moment, to absorb what’s there. We can marinate in what surrounds us in the here and now. So when we think about our lives as preparation for eternity, what is it that we want to marinate in? I wonder if took a look at the ways we spend our time and the attitudes those practices cultivate, what will we find? The more we spend our small budget of time marinating in those things that make us more loving, more prayerful, and more present, the more likely it is that our souls will carry those flavors into eternity.
It’s true that there are some things over which we have no control. Suffering is a reality that touches us all. But it strikes me that even in painful times, there is always something beautiful. If we can trust God enough to say “yes” to the trials of the moment, we can begin to taste and see his goodness in these, too, and develop a taste for unexpected and more complex flavors.
Thankfully, Isaiah tells us, “Blessed are all who wait for the Lord,” (30:18d). Not just the patient or unwaveringly faithful. All. That’s good news for those of us whose hearts ache with the pain of waiting.
But – I have to ask myself – am I waiting for the Lord? How often do I hear the news and rue the state of the world? Do I not believe Jesus’s promise of his coming Kingdom enough to maintain hope? How often do I live as though my day-to-day, the concerns of this moment, is all there is?
How might my life look differently if I returned more often to this vision of my life as the waiting room for eternity?
This season is a reminder to each of us to live for what we already know is coming. To embrace the joy of the present moment as we anticipate and prepare for the greater joy of what’s to come.
We don’t need to rush; the next thing will come.
And it will come whether we’ve received the gift of the present moment, or not.
This post is part of a blog hop by Spoken Women, an online community of Catholic women nurturing their creative callings. Click here to view the next post in this series "Joyful Waiting."