The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,

To the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that one should hope and wait quietly

For the salvation of the Lord.

—Lamentations 3:25–26

Waiting isn’t one of my virtues.

The mocking “Your call is important to us” from a customer service department. Switching lines in the grocery store or lanes on the street, only to discover that the line or lane I vacated is now moving at twice the speed. All of these kinds of experiences frustrate me to no end.

Waiting is about wanting to know the answer to the question “When?” As Americans, our insatiable quest for knowledge and information has escalated to the point where impatience and needing to have everything right now is the status quo.

And waiting is about control. When we wait, we no longer have control over our time and progress in life, as we find ourselves at the mercy of others.

***

In my life, waiting has usually been something undesirable. I had to take a year off of school between graduating high school and my first year of college, to pay off student loans that had defaulted (a long story, how I was in high school and had student loans—I’ll leave that for another post). I had to delay pursuing my MFA a year, because my grad school of choice never received my undergraduate transcript. Then I delayed grad school a second time, since I did something crazy—fell in love—and decided to tell the first grad school “Thanks, but no thanks.”

All of these experiences relate to school, but there have been other long, deeply personal periods of waiting. Waiting to see if my father would come home from the hospital when he fell ill. Waiting to see if my mother would come take me to live with her, as she so often promised.

While these instances didn’t end in the ways I hoped, I also learned much about myself along the waiting way.

***

Many years ago, I was the altar guild coordinator at our church in Florida. I set up communion weekly, changed the colors of the paraments and decorations in the sanctuary, based on where we were in the church year, and generally made sure that everyone could come into the church and worship in a welcoming, clean environment. Preparing for the Christmas season was my busiest time. I had a page-long task list that I checked daily, wanting everything to be perfect for our Christmas Eve candlelight services.

My first year as altar guild coordinator, after doing some research, I decided that, unlike in previous years, the trees and other decorations wouldn’t go up until Christmas Eve. This led to both confusion and anger, and I spent a lot of time defending my decisions. Most of the conversations went something like this:

“Why aren’t the Christmas trees up yet?”

Me: “It’s Advent, not Christmas, and we have Christmas trees, not Advent trees. Just because everyone else puts their trees up right after Thanksgiving doesn’t mean that we have to. Advent is about building up to Christ’s birth, so we have something to anticipate.”

“But the trees have always gone up right after Thanksgiving.”

And on it went.

I cried. I doubted myself. I prayed for wisdom. Was I doing the right thing? After all, what did it matter to me if the trees went up before Christmas Eve?

That first Christmas was difficult for me, and I thought about resigning almost every day. But I didn’t, and the second Christmas, I understood why.

In preparation for Christmas Eve service, I spent most of December 23 at church by myself, setting up and decorating. By the time I finished, I was exhausted and didn’t look forward to the next two days, which would bring even more work. When I put the last poinsettia in place, I plugged in the lights on the Christmas trees. Shuffling back to the last pew in the sanctuary, I flopped into it with a sigh.

Then, I looked up.

The warm glow of the lights, their white brilliance radiating, illuminating the altar and the wooden cross hanging over it, brought tears to my eyes.

I had spent two Advent seasons arguing, pleading, and negotiating with my brothers and sisters in Christ, trying to get them to understand that I didn’t stop “doing what we always did” out of a place of rebellion or lack of cooperation, but out of a sense of duty to what I felt called to do. To embrace the more ascetic and penitential aspect of Advent as it was once observed, instead of racing headlong into Christmas.

And after those two years, as I stared at that beautifully lit cross and all the festive decor my eyes beheld, I received the fruit of my labor and patience: the blessing of knowing the truth that my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is always worth the wait.

In His love,

Amanda

xoxo

Scripture taken from the New King James Version^®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.