Waiting

I’ve been scratching my arms the past three days, thinking I have an absurd amount of mosquito bites. When one of these “bites” birthed welts which began to spread and birth other welts, I had the epiphany that while weeding over the weekend, I was blindly attacked by poison ivy. My arms and neck are in a constant state of stinging, burning and itching and the rash is now spreading onto my face. I’m applying every means I can find to bring comfort, yet nothing is able to squelch the ever-present immense stinging and itching. 

I cannot escape the discomfort, for it beckons my attention all day long. I can only be present to my body and my discomfort and wait for restoration.

Throughout the past week, I’ve been pondering this week’s blog post—waiting. How ironic that my body is surrendered to an acute, wicked rash upon which I can only wait to make its way through my body until it decides its work is finished. The rash has brought a physical reminder of the excruciating discomfort which has encompassed my soul during seasons of waiting.

Many years ago, I was invited into the soul-excavating spiritual practice of waiting by a few wise sages in my life. I think Jesus had been inviting me into waiting long before then, but I didn’t yet have a paradigm out of which to hear his invitation. My unmet longings were not friends I embraced, welcoming them to have their way in me. The ache of them disturbed my peace and created rumblings in my soul that I felt might destroy me if I were to live into them. So I treated them more like unwelcome intruders with the capacity to disrupt my ways of maintaining what I thought was good for me—peace, connection, control, comfort. 

I filled the ache in my soul, which the unmet longings ushered in, with all manner of activity. Shopping, studying, reading, and friendships to name a few of my vices. My busy mind and body distracted me from feeling the ache of the emptiness within. 

A WAITING-SHAPED LIFE

And then God brought me vision for a waiting-shaped life. And something in me was drawn. Sue Monk Kidd writes, 

“The fullness of one’s soul evolves slowly. We’re asked to go within to gestate the newness God is trying to form; we’re asked to collaborate with grace. That doesn’t mean that grace isn’t a gift. Nor does it mean that the deliberate process of waiting produces grace. But waiting does provide the time and space necessary for grace to happen. Spirit needs a container to pour itself into. Grace needs an arena in which to incarnate. Waiting can be such a place if we allow it.” 

Some call waiting the fertile emptiness. It evaded me how the emptiness could be a fertile place. But, the image-bearer in me desired to collaborate with grace, and partner with my Creator to form me more into the person He created me to be. So I ceased my clamoring and invited God to wait with me in the ache of my unmet longings. Moment by moment, I released my grip on the things I thought would bring me life and chose to be still and allow Him to carve me out to create greater space for Him to occupy in my soul. 

On many days of that long season, I felt as though the ache might swallow me whole. But, instead of being consumed by it, God seemed to mold it into the walls of my soul, reshaping me in a way that created more space for Him to occupy. Being in that space with the Father, Son, and Spirit forged an intimacy between us that was unique. I began to see Him more clearly and rest in His goodness in a deeper way.

Coronavirus has ushered us all into waiting. Jesus awaits your invitation to be with you and gestate newness within you. Will you invite Him to enter into your waiting?

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” —Psalm 62:5