Most people don’t really like waiting. Being stopped at one of those very long red lights can be frustrating. Waiting your turn in the grocery line is trying on the more impatient among us. Waiting for a wisp of autumn in the south — when it’s 100 degrees in late September — is particularly exasperating. But these are trivial waiting experiences.
There are persons who are waiting today for a diagnosis from their doctor. Students wait for results from important tests, hoping to at least get a passing grade. Others wait at the bedside of an elderly parent, hoping for and dreading that last breath. These are serious seasons of waiting, life-changing experiences of waiting.
There is at least one more example of waiting — the one I’m experiencing today. My waiting is an exciting, joyful waiting for the car full of my grandchildren to pull up in our driveway. I seldom get to see them, or my son, since they live 11 hours away in Little Rock, Arkansas. So this is a special waiting time. Today I’m waiting expectantly, joyfully, gleefully for my family. It’s the best kind of waiting.
These days whenever I ponder what it means to wait, my thoughts go immediately to my five years of waiting for a life-altering kidney transplant. In these years, my teacher has been faith and my lesson has been patience. I have managed to develop an abundance of patience that has served me in every area of my life.
Patience has not always been one of my strongest character traits, though. I used to have very little patience, and that reality led me to some very raucous encounters with other people. As a victim advocate, I was very trying on judges — to my detriment. As a hospital chaplain, I was insistent when a patient’s medication was delayed. I could cite many examples of my impatience causing upheaval.
Which leads me to my memories of Ethel. I will never forget Ethel — my parishioner, my friend, my sister, my mother — the one person who was loyal to me and protective of me to a fault. To Ethel, it seemed I could do no wrong. She was wrong about that, of course.
Ethel was with me during the difficult time when my church refused my request for ordination. For six months they refused in every way that could hurt me. Ethel was in my corner through every pain-filled business meeting, including the final one that sealed the church’s decision to decline the opportunity to ordain the first Baptist woman in Arkansas.
I was impatiently devastated and saw no way toward ordination or toward the continuation of my ministry as a chaplain. I was “surrounded by a cloud of witnesses” that had seen what I had endured from my church. They lifted me up with their prayers and their constant encouragement. Ethel, however, did more than pray for and encourage me. In the midst of holding my pain with me, Ethel brought up the important fact that I needed to learn patience. Ethel loved me enough to be honest, and so with Bible in hand, she gave me this gift:
For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
For it will certainly come, it will not delay. (Habakkuk 2:3 NASB)
Wait for it, Ethel insisted, with a faith that knew exactly how to insist.
Wait for it!
She was right, as always.
So that is my personal experience of learning how to wait. It was a life lesson I needed to learn. And I did learn it (sort of). In the end, I did not become the first Baptist woman ordained in Arkansas, but I did become the first woman in Arkansas to serve as the pastor of a Baptist church. What a surprise from a constantly surprising God who did not intend for me to be a hospital chaplain, but instead led me into a nine-year ministry of being a pastor.
Today, though, I am just waiting for my beautiful grandchildren.
That’s the best surprise of all!
*************************************************
On another note, please pray for me as I wait for my kidney transplant. I am grateful that you are walking with me on this journey that often feels frightening. Your thoughts and prayers mean so much. If you would like to read the story of my journey at the Georgia Transplant Foundation’s website, please visit this link:
http://client.gatransplant.org/goto/KathyMFindley
A “Go Fund Me” page is set up for contributions to help with the enormous costs related to the transplant, including medications, housing costs near the transplant center, and other unforeseeable costs for my care following the transplant. If you can, please make a contribution at this link:
Today, a friend’s blog posed a provocative question. It was provocative enough to stop me in my tracks. Likely, I was right in the middle of a tirade of complaints when this question challenged me. This was the question: “If I let go of my complaints, what might be underneath?” *
I’m getting to know myself. Again! Moving through life takes one through changes large and small. We slip past the small ones pretty much unscathed. But oh, those large ones! The large changes are another story altogether. Sometimes they cause us to miss a step or two. Sometimes they stop us right where we stand. Sometimes they throw us all the way to the ground. But they always get our attention.
It’s one of those Mondays again, those days that just weigh on you a bit too heavily. You have to push yourself to start a new week. You feel that deep-down tiredness that overcomes you and you don’t even know why. Know the feeling?
Here’s the thing about life: things crash and break, obstacles can stop you in your tracks, you can get completely cut down. It happens to all of us.
What is it like to sit open-handed before God? To abide with a compassionate God who knows the grief we are carrying? To sit in the glowing presence of a God who, not only knows the deep angst of our nation, but who can also transform it?
Because I have no sense of direction at all, I have an irrational fear of getting lost. Do not tell me to go north or south. I will have no idea how to do that. You must instead say something like, “When you see McDonalds on the right, go past it. Then go past Wendys, Burger King and Barbaritos. Look just past Barbaritos, but on the other side of the road, and you’re there.” It’s a convoluted way of making sure I don’t lose my way. And if one of those fast food places were to close down, I’m lost.
To bring a bit of grace to your day, I offer prayers and blessings that have stood the test of time. Some of them have been used for centuries to lighten a load or brighten a day. In the great tradition of Celtic prayers and blessings, many of these are very much prayers and reflections from daily life, the ebb and flow of ordinary day to day life. They are petitions of the home and hearth.
Prayer for evening rest
I arise today
Blessings of light
Through the day
Comings and goings
Morning mist
This day and every day
mind·ful·ness
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 