Waiting

I received a special request to please write a blog on waiting.

What do I know about waiting? I’m the person who puts a destination in Google maps and then drives the longest route to purposely avoid any red dots on the screen, even if it adds twenty minutes travel time. I will NOT sit in traffic. I’m the person who sees a car in the drive through at the pharmacy and parks and walks in. If there is one person in line inside, before I get back out to the car, I’ve called my husband and put on my sweet voice and said, “Honey, can you stop at the pharmacy on your way home?” And yes, I’m the person who makes sure the horn is not anemic prior to purchasing a new vehicle.

So what do I know about waiting? Absolutely nothing! If I am to write about waiting, I must turn to a master for consultation. But in order to do this, I must confront my greatest regret. With the agony 2020 has forced upon us - the sheer groaning the waiting of 2020 presses down on all of us, I think the time has come.

We visited my grandmother frequently in her nursing home. We made this visit every time we traveled home for years, and the girls made a production in the small chapel next to her room. One would preach a “sermon” while the other conducted her choir, and we all have fond memories. Memaw needed to be in the home because her tiny little body simply kept trying to give out on her. Osteoporosis and degenerative scoliosis left her spine stooped and bent to the point that her esophagus kinked and a permanent feeding tube provided her only daily sustenance. For seven years no morsel of food passed into her stomach. I remember her chewing savory things only to spit them back out. She could not swallow. She only wanted her taste buds to recall memories of pleasures no longer afforded her. I only remember her ever taking Tylenol for what must have been excruciating pain as her internal organs rearranged and compressed under her ever collapsing and twisting spine. But she never lost one thought - not one moment of memory. Her mind was an iron vault.

Christmas of 2004 was different. When we came for our usual visit, she didn’t feel like getting out of the bed to walk to the chapel to listen to the girls hold “church”. My dad entertained them while Memaw and I simply talked. When our conversation came to an end, I held her frail little hand, and she told me she’d wait for me until I came home in the summer.

On June 28, 2005 the moving van pulled back into Louisiana from Kentucky. After seventeen years, sixteen moves, and two kids, I finally found my way back home. Dad wanted to go to the nursing home to see Memaw, but so much unpacking! I told him we would go on the weekend. Memaw died July 2. I never saw her again. Christmas of 2004 was my goodbye. She waited until summer for me just like she promised, but I didn’t come. This is my greatest regret in life. She waited for me, and I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain. If I dwell on this knowledge, it gnaws away at my soul like nerve pain that tingles and burns and scalds and no medication eases.

As I prayed over writing this, and I sat in stillness waiting for inspiration to come, I heard her words echoing so clearly, and the rawness of the pain they always bring, “I’ll wait for you until summer.” And suddenly, a blessed clarity pours over me that can only be called grace. She never said she would “see” me. She said she would wait. And I understand she wasn’t waiting for me at all, but for her own baby - her only son. The one who cared for her by himself for 45 years after his father died so young. The one who occupied hours with doctors’ visits and lengthy afternoon chats. She patiently waited and endured agonizing pain until his days seamlessly transitioned to being filled with babysitting and carpools and laughter and smiles. As I objectively remember our conversation, she knew she was saying her goodbyes to me that Christmas. She only waited until she knew her only baby would be OK without her.

The Bible is filled with stories of epic waiters like my memaw. Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses. I can keep on naming, but they all point us to Jesus. He is the one, the ultimate one, they all waited for to fully reconcile them to a holy, perfect, and loving God. For fifteen years, I have tortured myself, because I clung to what I perceived as my greatest failure. The judgmental evil of my own mind stole my peace. Jesus’s blood is too precious for me to waste on regret.

Thank you God for loving us enough to send your only Son so that we can all be OK, and if we believe in Him, make that seamless transition to heaven. I haven’t been this excited in anticipation of Christmas since childhood. I can’t wait! I’m decorating this weekend.

Thank you, mom, for challenging me to write on waiting. I love you.