On Waiting

The Path of Wait­ing
Henri Nouwen [empha­sis mine]

Wait­ing is wait­ing with a sense of promise. It is never a move­ment from noth­ing to some­thing. It is always a move­ment from some­thing to some­thing more. Zechariah, Eliz­a­beth, Mary, Simeon and Anna were liv­ing with a promise. It was a promise that nur­tured them, fed them, and enabled them to stay where they were.

Sec­ond, their wait­ing is active. They know that what they are wait­ing for is grow­ing from the ground on which they are stand­ing. Right here is a secret for us about wait­ing: if we wait in the con­vic­tion that a seed has been planted and that some­thing has already begun, it changes the way we wait. A wait­ing per­son is some­one who is present to the moment, believ­ing that this moment is the moment.

A wait­ing per­son is a patient per­son– some­one who is will­ing to stay where we are and live the sit­u­a­tion to the full in the belief that some­thing hid­den there will man­i­fest itself to us. Impa­tient peo­ple expect the real thing to hap­pen some­where else, and there­fore they want to get away from the present sit­u­a­tion and go else­where. For them the moment is empty. But patient peo­ple dare to stay where they are–nurturing the growth of some­thing grow­ing within.

Wait­ing is open-ended. This is hard for us because we tend to wait for some­thing that we wish to have. Much of our wait­ing is filled with wishes: “I wish I had a job. I wish the weather were bet­ter. I wish the pain would go away.” We are full of wishes, and our wait­ing eas­ily gets entan­gled in those wishes.

We want the future to go in a spe­cific direc­tion, and if it doesn’t hap­pen, we are dis­ap­pointed, and can even slip into despair. We want to do things that will make the desired events take place and thus sat­isfy our wishes. Our wishes tend to be con­nected with our fears, and fear of course pre­vents us from allow­ing time in our lives for open-ended wait­ing. Our wait­ing becomes a way of con­trol­ling the future.

But Zechariah, Eliz­a­beth, Mary, Simeon and Anna were not filled with wishes. They were filled with HOPE. It is a hope that trusts that ful­fill­ment would come, but ful­fill­ment accord­ing to the promises of God and not just accord­ing to their wishes. It is a trust that allows us to wait and be open to all possibilities.