The Waiting

It's been one of those days. I actually pleaded with God at lunch to not have to come back to work. I tried to argue that I've been responsible and I’ve faithfully come back at least a thousand times. Couldn't he come up with a legitimate reason for me not to return this afternoon? Please, please . . . pretty please?

Well I'm back and the whole thing reminds me of something I saw yesterday.

I took a little walk in the afternoon to try and wake myself up after a nap. I was walking down one side of the street and from the other side of the street, down at the other end of the block, I could hear a child wailing and crying. It was immediately recognizable as a sort of self pitying, I didn't get my way, my life is ruined, cry. I looked around thinking there would be a few children hanging about; maybe they had gotten in a fight or something. As I tried to make out where and what tyranny might be unfolding, I saw a lone boy riding his bike up the street toward me. The more I looked and listened the more I realized that all this noise was coming from him. As he wailed and peddled and shouted his way closer, I began to make out what he was saying. "I hate her, I hate her, she's the worst mother in the world, I hate her!" He spewed it all the way by me without a flinch. I don’t know if he didn’t see me or he just didn’t care.

Along with all sorts of other things bubbling around in me as I witnessed this, was the cringe of recognition I had as I felt his strain to find a curse deep enough to match the disappointment. In someway too, there was the bolstering to try and convince himself that she really was the worst mother in the world, maybe evil incarnate.

What a relief it would be if she was. There would be no requirement, no responsibility to obey or honor such a person. He could be free to disregard her and go and do or be whatever he liked without question.

So as I drove back to work today under the unction of responsibility to my employer this little boy’s cry leapt to life in me. There was this seizing of self pity and anger. I actually shed a few tears as I drove onto the premises and walked very slowly back inside. I might have been tempted, like the boy, to accuse God of being unloving and even cruel if it hadn’t of been for something that happened about forty minutes earlier at the beginning of my lunch hour.

I left for lunch in a hurry eager to get away from the phone and to hear myself think without interruption, maybe even to hear what God might be thinking about my situation.

And here’s the situation, as best as I can say in a short space. It’s really more that I’ve been in a state of intense longing lately. I won’t try to name the nature or circumstances of it all, but you could say I’m in a state of meta-longing. One of the keenest things I’m longing for these days is for a deeper intimacy with Jesus. Which I’ve been cultivating for awhile, but the longing has gone deeper than what I can get at and so I’m waiting. I’m waiting for God to do what I cannot. By the lunch hour today I was distressed by it all and bordering on exhaustion with it. I left work and went to Whole Foods full of my angst. As I’m wondering up the prepared foods aisle I hear Tom Petty singing this refrain,

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Everything in me looked up, expecting God to be right above my head. And the dawning came over me. "I’m not lost to you? You know? You know, you see and you know and now I’m crying, I’ve got actually tears in my eyes right here next to the sushi. You love me and you haven’t left, you followed me to the grocery store and you know about the waiting. Thank you . . . thank you."

The Lord is relentless and He loves me, even if I have to go back to where I don’t want to be and do what I don’t want to do. One day I won’t, but God knows that the waiting is the hardest part.