Lessons learned - Learning how to wait

There have been too many lessons learned to elaborate in one post, so I've decided to do a series of posts on what I have learned. Actually, these lessons are not lessons I have learned, but lessons I am learning... and they contain not many new ideas, but rather new experiences I have traveled through which makes for lessons lived rather than learned. I only knew infirmity from an intellectual perspective; now I feel as though I have lived it...and yet, I realize that all over the world, there is suffering that makes my suffering seem small. Nonetheless, these experiences...living out this process...has been new to me.

I have learned to wait.

There has been waiting in pain,
waiting in darkness
waiting in silence
waiting in fear
waiting in loneliness
waiting for doctors
waiting for things to get worse
waiting for things to get better
waiting for sleep to come
waiting for the fog to lift
-----and-----
There has been waiting with patience
waiting in the presence of love
waiting with hope
waiting in peace
waiting in gratitude
waiting upon the Lord.

Aren't we are all waiting all the time for some future event, outcome, or closure?...As soon as we come to the end of something, we see that we are waiting for something else...for the grade, the promotion, the diagnosis, the phone call, the weekend, the baseball season to begin, to end, the football season, the bowl games, the Olympics, the election, the diet, the feast, for the spring, the summer, the fall, (and even...for a few strange people, the winter), to live...to die. When I was able to swallow liquids again, and started drinking Ensure, I started waiting for the day I could eat food again...now, I eat food with sauce, and I find myself waiting for when I can eat a bagel...

At it's worst, waiting has become a trap for me. At times, it holds me captive...It makes the moment, the day I am living, irrelevent. When I was marking the days of radiation with acorns on my window sill, I was waiting for the 35 days to end...and it seemed they never would. There was nothing special about day 17, other than I was a little more miserable than day 16 and one day closer to day 35. Even more difficult, those sleepless nights when I was in discomfort and ill, I kept looking at the clock...2AM...3AM...4AM...5AM... wating for what? Those were the darkest of nights.

Even today...I am waiting...for my saliva to return...for my next cancer exam to, God willing, be a good one...

And yet, I believe, as is written in Scripture that "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength..." (Isaiah 40:31)

And here is the lesson I am learning...waiting on God is entrusting tomorrow to Him, trusting the outcome to Him, and striving to ACCEPT and live fully my strengths and gifts and appreciate the blessings that are with me and available to me in this moment. While I can't eat a bagel...I can eat lasagna...then let me fully be immersed in that lasagna instead of waiting impatiently for the bagel that sits in the freezer. If my energy level only allows me to see four clients a day instead of six...let me be thankful for the four...or for the three or one...

While it is true I seem to be waiting all the time, it is also true that I have this day to contend with. This day brings opportunities and blessings and challenges for me. When I tie my energy up with some future outcome, I lose track of how precious this day really is. Even a day of pain may be full of meaning in endurance and a day to live well...that is the lesson I am continuing to learn...to trust (wait on) God on the cloudy days as well as on days of sunshine. To see that there is still value and meaning on a cloudy day...and a contribution to make, people to love, God to thank and blessings to be grateful for.

Certainly, this lesson is a hard one; one that I continue to learn and grow in experience...but I think I am living with more gratitude and patience and appreciation for this moment than I have previously known.