Edgework

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope (Psalm 130:5).

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22).

I don’t have a problem with patience; it’s the waiting I can’t stand (Anonymous encourager).

It seems that the more important persons are the less they have to wait. Can you imagine a doctor sitting in an office waiting for you to show up? Or Queen Elizabeth waiting in a grocery store lineup to buy her bread and cheese? Or Prime Minister Harper waiting for a flight out of town?

The world is arranged so that important people don’t have to wait. Their secretaries make appointments for us to see them. The more important they are the longer we have to wait to connect with them – maybe six months or even a year. So it is quite easy to estimate one’s importance within our society by the amount of time you spend waiting.

Truth be told, no one of us really enjoys waiting. But waiting brings with it some positive potential for those willing to exploit it. For example, it is only in the context of waiting that we can learn patience. Patience is a virtue; even called a fruit of the Spirit by the apostle Paul. Those who never have to wait simply don’t get to practice patience very much. So it is fair to affirm that “Blessed are those who wait well, for they will learn that patience has more value than being important.”

In my own life, waiting has recently taken on new dimensions. I am waiting for a medical procedure, scheduled to take place within six weeks or so, to eliminate atrial fibrilation. I have already been waiting for at least a year without any confirmed dates and times. But now I am waiting for a specific date to arrive that I have been given when I will get the attention I need.

Being in this stage of waiting has caused me to reflect more seriously than usual about how to wait well. There are many ways of waiting poorly. One way is to be anxious and fretful while in the waiting process. This comes quite naturally to most of us. I can begin to imagine that life has no meaning until the time I am waiting for has arrived; that life stops until the waiting time is over.

Henry Nouwen once said, “Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we are looking for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.” That is to say that instead of folding our arms and waiting, we should learn to “milk the moment” for what it’s worth. There are lessons to learn while we wait because each moment of our lives has its own unique potential. If we are unable to discover the treasure that lies hidden in the present moment it is unlikely that we will find the treasure beneath our feet once our long-expected moment has arrived. Most likely we will then begin looking forward again and wait for another special moment to arrive, hope that meaning will return to life once more. Such leap-frogging does not lead to fullness of life. But when we wait well by living fully in the moment we are in, we tap into a source of life that impatient persons never experience.

Another thing that learning to wait is teaching me is that there are a lot of other people who are also waiting. It is humbling to realize that I am just one of many persons with various needs who spend a lot of time waiting in line. Whether it is in the grocery checkout line or in the waiting room at the emergency ward at the hospital, someone is ahead of me and someone is behind me. We are in this game of life together. Lying on a stretcher in one of the ten stations in the emergency ward, I become acutely aware of people around me, some of whom are in more serious trouble than I am. I also become aware of the medical staff trying its best to meet everyone’s needs but not being able to do so all at the same time. That means my waiting is benefiting someone in greater need than myself. Waiting simply is the stuff of life if we want to live well in community.

Waiting for a heart procedure at my age (65) also forces me to think in a more focused way about end-of-life issues. All medical procedures have risks. The risk may be low, but if I am part of that low percentage it could be a hundred percent as far as I am concerned. It’s not that I haven’t thought of end-of-life issues before. My wife and I have had a will for many years and we regularly visit Ruth’s mother who is 86 years old and not very well.

But this specific time of waiting I am in is providing a context for more specific in-depth reflection. If I don’t survive the procedure or if it leaves me impaired in some way, what would I want Ruth and my family to do? Do I want to be kept alive at all costs? What kind of funeral would I like to have? Do I have all my papers in order and does the family know where to find them? How can I best express my love for family and friends now, while I still can? To be honest, it has taken me a while to become comfortable with such questions. But the longer I work at answering them, the more comfortable I begin to feel. This too is part of what it means to live well while I wait.

Waiting can be hard. But it has its own rewards for those who wait well.