we wait
Caught up in the morning whoosh, I rush to the car, balancing my bag, my water, my phone. I call out the usual things, looking forward but tossing the words behind me, a list of rapid-fire questions each beginning with “Do you have your….”
Adam walks out close behind me, lightly slinging his backpack over his arm. “Yes,” I hear him say, pleased by my interview because he expects it. He has been ready for a while. We climb in, he and I, and finally I exhale, and then, we wait. So much of our waiting feels like a slow crumble. It consumes me from the inside.
Where’s Riley?
Adam left the door slightly ajar, and from the car, I catch sight of her briefly through a slice of open doorway. She crosses the room purposefully, and then crosses back the other way, and then strides again across the room. I tap my thumb on the steering wheel; I even pray, “Please, Lord. We’re gonna be late.” Riley lives life at one speed, without hurry. Often I envy her this oblivious revolt against the tyranny of time. I have learned not to push her too hard. In fact, rushing Riley is like opening a dam; her anxiety floods. Meanwhile, even before I reach the sea of traffic, hurry pulls me under like a rip tide. “Life is not an emergency,” I tell myself out loud, quoting a favorite Ann Voskamp line. This week, I feel short of breath.
I settle back in my seat, glancing at Adam in the rear view mirror, thinking that my impatience shows worst of all when I drive. I like to think otherwise, watching from a safe distance while other drivers jerk suddenly out of one lane and into another, competing for one more step ahead, but the truth is that I fume when I can’t find a logical reason for the rush hour crawl.
Is it really just the hour we’re rushing?
Catching my gaze and just as quickly flicking it away, Adam smiles. There’s so much information for him in a person’s eyes, too much to hold on too long. “Grandma and Papa are coming in December,” he says quietly, as if somehow in answer to my lightening prayer or my complaints about the passing time.
“You’re right; they are,” I say, noticing the way this delicious anticipation stretches his grin wide. Routinely, I walk in my office to find my planner pulled out and on the desk, the pages carefully pressed flat. I imagine Adam standing over it, running his finger along the grid, counting days until my mom and dad visit. He waits with hope. It’s the kind of waiting that makes days sweet instead of long; the kind that makes time come instead of pass. Adam’s waiting, an altogether different thing than my own chronic hurry, suddenly brings me an entirely different kind of flood, one whipped up by the wind of the Spirit. Adam’s waiting is about looking forward instead of about hurrying on. Wait for the Lord, the Spirit says. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord (Psalm 27:14). We wait in hope (Psalm 33:20); blessed are all who wait for him (Isaiah 30:18); those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength (Isaiah 40: 31). There’s one kind of waiting that renews our strength instead of draining it: the kind that looks for God, expecting; the kind that speaks peace right into the middle of my short-sighted hurry. This kind of waiting, the kind for which I make so little time, redeems the rush right with my eyes. He’s coming, and time matures, growing full for Him, like a fruit-bearing tree heavy with readiness.
I glance in the mirror at Adam again and smile.
“Hey, Adam? Jesus is coming too.”
“Yes,” he says immediately, looking at me strong, those bright eyes smiling.
Yes. And so, we wait.
