waiting

I’ve been thinking about waiting. There’s a longing about waiting.  For both something to end and something to begin. I’ve come through a long season of waiting, with hope that I would make it through the waiting period, believing that something better would come.  And so the waiting has ended.  And never in my imagine would I have believed what the “better” could and would be. Honestly, I was not certain I would make it through this extended wait.  It was years long. It was like being in the desert, and now the desert is in bloom.

I think we are often asked to wait.  We are to have patience.  That’s not one of my better features. In Romans 8:25, we read “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

This is definitely a reminder for me, because there is always waiting ahead. Travel. A phone call. A diagnosis. Conversations. Sluggish internet. Even 4:00pm when it’s time for my carefully crafted cappuccino.

This day I have proof of the result of waiting – right outside on my deck. A long-ago plant mystery was solved with the preliminary identification of the plant and then the harvesting of seeds to confirm the identity. This is a particularly special plant to me, having grown it for 30 years in the place I lived before my move to the mountains. I was more than distressed when I feared it did not make it to my new home, and set upon a path to identify and subsequently to grow once. again.

Each year I plant seeds harvested from the previous year, and then I am forced to wait — For the sprouting of the seed, the growing of the plant, and finally this day- two blooms! Definitely a reward for my waiting and for whatever patience I found for the wait.

May Sarton says “Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back in the slow circles of nature, is a help.”