Welcome to this safe, sacred space.
You belong. You are beloved.
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Coming to you with this blessing on a rainy evening at dusk. There’s something poetic here. Because dusk itself is a kind of waiting, an already but not yet. No longer the light of the day and yet not the dark of night. And friends. There’s beauty here at dusk. Even as a thunderstorm rolls through. Much like our journey in the waiting.
As a hospice chaplain & a pastor it’s my privilege to hold others stories with gratitude and care. And you know. We don’t talk enough about the waiting.
Waiting for something you know is coming. It’s on the calendar with great expectation. A child’s wedding. A niece’s college graduation, the first in her family to do so. The due date of a grandchild. The start of a new job. Or perhaps on the calendar with heartache or uncertainty. A surgery. Court dates. A funeral. The human experience holds all of this and more. And we spend far more time in the waiting between these dates so well marked on our calendars.
And then there’s the waiting without those certain dates. A terminal diagnosis and disease process. Moving toward goals you feel called to with obstacles and barriers that make it seem like running a marathon without a finish line in sight. Waiting for the power to return after a hurricane. Waiting for restoration in the brokenness of strained relationships. Waiting for healing to come where scars testify to the depths of hurt and pain.
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A blessing for the waiting & wandering
Waiting is hard. We need to name this more often. To give voice & give space to this fatiguing “already and not yet”.
How the uncertainty in the waiting is often worse than the knowing… no matter what the news. Come what may.
Blessed are we, navigating without a fixed center or true north. No compass or guide.
Except this sacred knowing, this longing, this holy discontent that inspires the courage to reach beyond our current reality to the heights of what can be.
And yet. We find ourselves.
Wandering. Wondering. Waiting.
Busy yet bored. The tyranny of the urgent which demands a response.
Productive yet doubting purpose.
The angst of feeling unfaithful to the faith that drives us & calls us beyond this place.
Blessed are we. Treading water. With weights tied around the ankles.
And no safe harbor in sight.
Unanchored & yet weighted down.
Can this itself be the journey?
A testing of endurance & determination?
Or perhaps the harder, holy act of releasing & letting go. Is there respite? A moment of clarity?
Perhaps. Perhaps here.
When we find ourselves.
Tethered in hope. Rooted & grounded in love.
Like the autumn leaves muted in their glory when the fog, rain & wind rolls in.
We shine just as brightly in all our glory…
even when clouds & shadows creep in…
So blessed are we who find ourselves.
In the Wandering. Wondering. Waiting.
For we are not content to stay where it is comfortable & familiar when new horizons beckon to us.
Blessed are we who journey toward something greater than we can yet see.
Wandering. Wondering. Waiting.
Not Lost. Not Found. Not yet. Not yet.