The Sacrament of Waiting.
I have kept this article for a long time.
Why? Well, for one, I am the Queen of Hoarding!
I stockpile a lot of interesting articles
and put it in an archive for future references.
Second, I like to reread articles that somehow
touched my life in one way or another.
Third, I am still in the "waiting" period. Ha!
I invite you to read this article and ponder on the thought of where you are now in terms of "waiting" in life.
Are you still waiting?
Waiting requires more discipline, more self-control
and emotional maturity, more unshakable faith
in our cause, more unwavering hope in the future,
more sustaining love in our hearts that all the greatest
deeds of deering-do go by the name of action.
there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have to wait.
It must be an important mystery because
there is so much waiting in our lives.
(testing our patience and our nerves, schooling us
in self-control.) We wait for meals to be served,
for a letter to arrive, for a friend to call
or show up for a date.
We wait in line at cinemas and theaters,
concerts and circuses. Our airline terminals,
railway stations and bus depots are great temples
of waiting filled with men and women who wait in joy
for the arrival of a loved one – or wait in sadness
to say goodbye and give the last wave of hand.
We wait for springs to come – or autumn –
for the rains to begin and stop.
from childhood to maturity.
We wait for those inner voices
that tell us when we are ready for the next stop.
We wait for graduation,
for our first job, our first promotion.
We wait for success and recognition.
We wait to grow up – to reach the stage
where we make our own decisions.
We cannot remove this waiting from our lives.
It is a part of the tapestry of living –
the fabric in which the threads are woven
to tell the story of our lives.
forget the need to wait “grab all the gusto you can get.”
So reads one of America’s greatest beer ads get it now!
Instant pleasure, instant transcendence.
Do not wait for anything.
Life is short – eat, drink and be merry
because tomorrow you will die.
And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed
and irresponsible freedom –
pre-marital sex and extra marital affairs –
they warn against attachments and commitments –
against expecting anything of anybody,
or allowing them to expect anything of us –
against dropping any anchors
in the currents of our life that will
cause us to hold and wait.
but even that is fleeting and doubtful –
what was it Shakespeare said about
the mad pursuit of pleasure –
“Past reason hunted, and once had, past reason hated.”
Not if we wish to be real human beings,
spirit as well as flesh, soul as well as heart,
we have to learn to wait.
For if we never learn to wait,
we will never learn to love someone other than ourselves.
For most of all waiting means waiting for someone else.
It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday
like a stray wind of leaf falling from a tree.
Anyone who has loved knows how much waiting
goes into it – how much waiting is important
for love to grow, to flourish through a lifetime.
Why can we not have it right now
what we so desperately want and need?
Why must we wait – two years, three years –
and seemingly waste so much time?
You might as well ask why a tree
should take so long to bear fruit –
the seed to flower – carbon to change to diamond.
There is no simple answer –
no more than there is to life’s other demands -
having to say goodbye to someone you love
because either you or they have made other commitments;
or because they have to grow
and find the meaning of their own lives –
having yourself to leave home
and loved ones to find your own path –
good-byes, like waiting, are also sacraments of our lives.
All we know is that growth –
the budding, the flowering of love needs patient waiting.
We have to give each other a time to grow.
There is no way we can make someone else
truly love us or we them, except through time.
So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting –
of being present without asking demands and rewards.
There is nothing harder to do than this.
It truly tests the depth and sincerity of our love.
But there is life in the gift we give.
So lovers wait for each other –
until they can see things the same way
or let each other freely see things in quite different ways.
There are times when lovers hurt each other
and cannot regain the balance of intimacy
of the way they were.
They have to wait –
in silence but still present to each other –
until the pain subsides to an ache
and then only a memory
and the threads of the tapestry
can be woven together again
in a single love story.
when we try to find shortcuts through life –
when we try to incubate love
and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment
we are neither mature nor responsible enough to assume?
We lose the hope of truly loving or of being loved.
Think of all the great love stories of history and literature
– isn’t it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but common mystery – that waiting is part of the substance – the basic fabric against which the story
of that true love is written.
if we are too impatient to wait for it?
My thoughts...
Waiting is a test, that's for sure!
Either we pass the waiting game or flunk it.
At this point in my life, there are a couple of
"waiting platforms" that I lurk into:
- I wait for justice to be served for mommy.
(If it takes a lifetime to wait, I don't care,
as long as it will be served.)
- I wait for the love of my life!
(Ha! Go figure! It's not what you think.)
- I wait for that "spark" in life for me
to totally give it all.
(Been praying for "this" for a looooong time!)
But I think, more than me lurking in the waiting platforms
and waiting for things to happen,
it is God who really waits BIG TIME for me!
(Yeah, yeah, I know...)
I am one classic prodigal daughter.
I figured out already that I will "return" to the Father
but I have this fear of the consequences
I will have to face once I am back.
Am I really ready to fulfill my duties as the Father's daughter?
Am I ready to turn my back to what I used to be comfortable
with and deal with the realities of life?
Lord, you know what is in my heart.
I have many issues to deal with,
problems to solve and
concerns to respond to.
Hear me out ...
Gracious God, it’s so hard to wait.
To wait for new things to happen in my life.
To wait for you to answer my prayers.
To wait for the open doors that
may lead me into a new way of being.
During the time of waiting,
it seems that all I can think of is having
what it is I am waiting for.
At times I feel weary of asking and waiting,
and I wonder if you really hear my prayers at all,
if you are ignoring me,
or if you are simply refusing to
give me my heart’s desire.
A part of me knows that you want my best,
and that your time is not my time,
but Lord, it is still so hard to wait.
Deepen my trust, O Lord,
during the times when my heart longs
for what can only come in the fullness of time.
Give me a calm assurance that
your will for me is grander than
anything I could ever imagine.
Still my mind and heart in your love
so that I am mindful of the grace
you are draping around me every single day,
every single moment.
I ask this for the sake of your love.
Amen.
I will not keep you waiting, Lord.
Promise.
At yan ang sabi ni Manang!
San Francisco, California, USA
October 2014