Season of Waiting

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

My visit with the surgeon went well yesterday. I felt I was in good, competent, and compassionate hands. The next day I received a call from his office and a date – April 21st. Just a little over three weeks from today. So I begin a short season of waiting.

Now, I should be good at this. My favorite season of the church liturgical year is Advent, the approximately four weeks before the celebration of Christmas. It is essentially a season of waiting. The scriptures are all about how something is coming, something big is happening. Not just the birth of a baby, but the breaking of God into the world in a most spectacular way. There will be signs and wonders, anxiety and fear. Most of all, there will be preparation and waiting.

Advent is a season of watchful anticipation. We even have a beautiful ritual to mark the time, a wreath of four candles, each signifying a theme as we wait for the climactic event – hope, peace, joy, and love. We light them and nurture within ourselves and each other the meaning of the light that is growing with every passing week. In this way we prepare ourselves for incarnation, God becoming flesh in the child Jesus and in us.

Okay, okay, bypass surgery is not exactly Christmas. But it is likely (I hope) the most climactic event that my body will experience this year. And I know it is coming. I am both afraid and hopeful. So how to wait in these days?

This morning, I sought out one of my spiritual mentors, the late Father Henri Nouwen. Perhaps in a future post I will relay my Henri story, but suffice it to say that when I first read him in high school, I declared I wanted to be the female Henri Nouwen when I grew up, so I followed him to Yale Divinity School. I guess I was a spiritually ambitious child! In any case, when I am struggling, Henri always grounds me.

In a book of Advent reflections entitled Watch for the Light, Henri wrote:

“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation to the full in the belief that something hidden will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, “Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention.’ (p. 32)

I am not having a child, but something indeed is happening to me. Believing as I do that everry moment is filled with the presence of God, I must wait, be fully awake, in this moment and not run away or distract myself out of fear. Even in this, I am being called to listen for the angel that is urging me to growth, to change, to incarnation in a totally unexpected way.

So, how do I wait? With patience, in an active dialogue with the One who is calling me out of my exhaustion to have life, life to the full. This is what I am hearing.