waiting
A year ago, I wrote about our Dr. Seuss-ish tree, which refused to lose its leaves until the beginning of spring.
Time has allowed me to be a bit more patient and, in many ways, not pay attention to the clusters of leaves seemingly glued to our Persian Ironwood. It wasn’t until mid-March that I noticed half of the leaves had fallen, and the next day, it was completely bare.
A few days later, buds emerged, and if by magic, leaves began to appear, as can be seen above. Now it is covered in the splendor of vivid green leaves.
I suspect it stands proudly beside our mighty maple, unadorned since late summer, its only covering, small buds.
I was reminded of my previous post when I stumbled upon this concept in a novel I was reading.
“What do you call those trees that hold on to their leaves even in the winter?”?
“Persistent?” says Charles.
“Marcescent,” says Helen, because she knows the word for everything. She is such a puzzler.
“That’s how he is,” Pam tells them.
As an aside, I love messy family dramas. This book didn’t quite deliver what I imagined, especially given the premise. I gave it 3 1/2 stars, and not because Helen was a bit cranky and a know-it-all. I loved the cover!
Last month, I received a text from a friend. I told her I was sitting in the waiting room as Carl had a procedure. Later, I was wondering and wrote to her how life can seem to be filled with a lot of waiting room. To which, she heartily agreed.
We are all waiting.
Waiting for something to be resolved.
Waiting to learn the outcome.
Waiting for a diagnosis.
Waiting for a return call for an answer or even a connection.
Waiting for good news.
Waiting to be farther down the hard path.
Waiting to celebrate.
Waiting in the midst of a multitude of scenarios.
Tomorrow, I will meet with my rheumatologist, as it marks a real, yet invisible line. For lack of a better description, this will be a time of assessing how I am doing.
I know my words tomorrow will not be scarce, but if I had only two words, they would be mixed bag.
Waiting for this invisible line has made me see how much weight can be placed on a date or time.
It has also caused me to ponder my prayer life. Over the last three years of dealing with physical pain and loss of parts of my identity, I have noticed my prayers for others are different than my own for me.
I can pray fervently for others, and the words easily escape my lips. My own prayers seem to be of the “help me, thank you for less pain today, may I feel productive today, or, oh, get me through this” variety. I don’t pray for healing very often.
I have had to ask myself, and God, is this because I have lost trust or lack belief? After wrestling with these questions, I have landed in a place of knowing how deeply I believe that with a whisper, God could take the pain completely away, but I tend to inhabit a place of walking with Him within each day, whatever it holds.
I write this knowing that my daily life holds a fraction of what others face.
After feeling a bit more settled, I happened to peruse one of my bookshelves and picked up Pete Greig’s book, God On Mute. It was a couple of weeks into Lent, and I had started reading it around the same time last year.
I decided to use the back section of the book holding Lenten meditations. Dismissing my usual qualms of not starting on time, I flipped to Day 16 and was stopped in my tracks, loudly exhaled, tilted my neck backward, closed my eyes, and deeply sighed.
There is nothing like deeply resonating with words you believe but could never articulate in a worthy way.
“That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behaviour of matter and produce what we call miracles is part of Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore stable, world demands that these occasions should be extremely rare.”
~C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain
This quote saved me.
It deepened my belief in God watching me and with me.
Maybe my own prayers aren’t stingy or speckled with doubt, but surrendering to someone else’s hands.
It reminded me of a couple of days in March when the pain was deeply in the background, and I uttered words expressing how I felt like my old self of three years ago; it felt foreign.
Those days can be tiny miracles, and I am deeply grateful.
What are you currently waiting for?
What waiting rooms do you inhabit?
May you feel surrounded by peace and presence as you wait.
May you know it is perfectly fine to ask questions.
