Waiting – Sometimes Easy and Sometimes Very Difficult!

Sunday, October 18, 2009 / Autoimmune Disease, Blog, Chronic Illness, Motivation To Change

Today I am in the space of waiting – waiting to welcome a precious new grandchild into the world. Patience isn’t my best virtue so this “waiting” has led me on a curious exploration of this topic.
As I reflect on other places of waiting in my life, I can see that sometimes the experience was easy and sometimes hopelessly difficult. In some situations I was able to do my part and then remain relaxed about the outcome and in other places I strived and pushed in order to get what I wanted.

So, I offer here a few thoughts on three different types of waiting and encourage you to ponder the places in your life where you have to wait. What makes waiting easier to bear and what is it that makes the experience so challenging we don’t think we’ll get through it?

PROCRASTINATED WAITING
This type of waiting happens for all of us when we don’t want to step up into our life and take charge of something we know we ought to do. We have the power to influence the outcome of the situation but we back away, instead. We avoid the task and look for any number of distractions and alternatives to keep ourselves busy. Rather than make our life better, procrastinated waiting tends to increase the stress that we feel. It simply hovers in the background of our awareness and becomes a chronic energy drain. Over time, the consequence of our waiting may escalate and we might find ourselves in an increasingly difficult situation. How many times have you put off paying a bill, going to the doctor or raising a difficult topic with a friend only to find that the problem grows bigger and bigger over time? Procrastinated waiting is our way of avoiding an unpleasant task. The motivation to do it isn’t big enough for us to push past our fear and do it anyway.

OBLIGATORY WAITING
This type of waiting is forced upon us and is not usually a situation that we would voluntarily choose. It is the challenging places of life where we have to wait for a biopsy result, wait for someone to ask us to marry them, wait to see if we got the new job, or, like me today, wait until a new baby arrives. Because we didn’t chose the circumstance, this type of waiting can feel powerless and difficult. There is often very little we can do to influence our circumstance and we are simply left to find some strategies to make the waiting easier. We might talk to a friend, we might go to the gym, we might, like our daughter in law, go for long walks in the hope of encouraging labour. There are strategies we can choose that will minimze the stress of our waiting but the ultimate outcome is rarely within our control.

PEACEFUL WAITING
Peaceful waiting comes after we have done our part in a difficult situation and now can simply remain curious and peaceful until the outcome appears. Unlike procrastinated waiting, peaceful waiting decreases stress and eliminates the worry drain from the background of our mind. It feels empowering and hopeful as we are able to quietly wait to see what is next. To arrive at an experience of peaceful waiting I offer that the most important ingredient is faith in something larger than ourselves. We can only remain quiet and still and put our fear to rest if we are able to rest securely in the idea that there is some other bigger plan at work. If we believe life is simply a crapshoot with no predictable rhymn or reason, often our imagination becomes preoccupied with fearful outcomes. Even if we have been placed in a situation of obligatory waiting, we can do our best to influence the parts that are within our control and then let go of pushing to create the outcome we want. We can simply quietly and peacefully wait.

So, for me, I am waiting along with the rest of my family for the joyful arrival of a new little baby. It is a place of obligatory waiting where none of us have any control at all. Our daughter in law can walk, rest, play with her 2 1/2 year old and wait until this little one decides it is time. Me, on the other hand, I have even less influence over the situation. I can only bake casseroles for a dinner that I am sure will be needed shortly, buy all our grandson’s favourite foods so he will be happy when he stays with us, and dream of the little pixie face that will soon be part of our family pictures. The biggest part of my waiting experience now is my faith in God. I trust that He is caring for our son and daughter in law as well as their baby and knows exactly when the time will be right. I can rest quietly and patiently in that knowledge and simply go to bed early in case we get a call in the middle of the night. I remember the experience of waiting for each of our 4 children and the dreams that I had of what they might look like and who they would be. I have discovered that waiting for a grandchild creates the same experience – one of joyful anticipation as we add another member to our growing family. And, the experience of watching our grown son lovingly hold his baby is even better than I could ever have imagined.

PRAY AS IF EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON GOD. ACT AS IF EVERYONE DEPENDS ON YOU.