The Waiting Game

My mom garnered a nickname when I was a teenager, and no, I wasn't the one who bestowed the moniker upon her. It was given to her by some other adults who were fellow sponsors along with Mom and Dad on a youth group trip to the amusement park Opryland. They began calling Mom "First Lady" because of her ability to work her way around people as they waited in line for the rides. We could never figure out how Mom accomplished the feat of getting ahead of everyone else ... she managed to negotiate her way around the metal rails that separated the waiting streams of people. Mom rode almost every ride on that trip with total strangers ... you see, she didn't really care whom she rode with, but she cared a whole lot that she cut down on her waiting time. To this day, I can see her grinning from ear to ear as she waved to the rest of us from the front of the line, happy to be riding the rides and thrilled that she didn't have to wait as long as we did.

I've been thinking a lot about waiting recently, and even more so over the last week. Baby Johnson was due last Tuesday, but she has decided to delay her grand entrance into our lives. Our whole family is on pins and needles waiting for the little girl to be born, and each time I see Matt's name pop up on my phone, my heart starts pounding and I break out in a cold sweat. I'm pretty sure that when it really is "the" call, I will probably pass out cold when I hear the news that my granddaughter has finally entered the world. In the grand scheme of life, nine months really isn't that long, but when you're waiting on a baby's birth, it seems like an eternity. And as Matt and very pregnant and tired Becca have learned, there's nothing you can really do to speed things along ... that baby will be born when God says it's time for her to be born. And so ... we wait ... and wait ... and wait.

While my family waits for a new life to begin, my dear friend Donna spent last week holding the hand of her 90-year-old mother, waiting for her to leave this life and enter eternity. When I received a text message from Donna yesterday evening saying that her mom was gone, my mind instantly flew back to the morning my sister and I held Daddy's hands as he, too, ended his journey here on earth. Waves of emotion swept through me as I recalled the night Brad and I entered Mom's apartment to find that she had slipped away while she slept in her favorite chair. Last night and all day today, I've been struck over and over again with the significance of the two different avenues of waiting that Donna and I have walked in recent days ... one of us waiting for a beginning, and one of us waiting for an ending.

The more I think about waiting, the more I recognize that it's a difficult thing to do. It really doesn't matter if I'm waiting on something wonderful or if I'm waiting on something I know will be painful, it's never easy to wait. I guess I don't much like playing the waiting game ... I guess I just don't like it much at all. The more I wrap my arms around the difficulty of waiting, the more I acknowledge how much of my life is now spent doing just that ... waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... waiting for beginnings and waiting for endings. And even as I type those words, I'm aware of another truth. With beginnings also come endings ... the beginning of my granddaughter's life will mark the ending of Becca's pregnancy ... the ending of the earthly life of Donna's mother will mark the beginning of her eternal one. Waiting for life and waiting for death ... waiting and waiting and waiting.

"Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary." Isaiah 40:31