Waiting

I picked up a bulletin on my way into church yesterday afternoon. It's the Presentation, the cover announced, and I thought with a rush of gratitude about Simeon and his patience.

One of my kids has been waiting, bravely and patiently, for a while now. We were expecting some preliminary resolution by Friday, and when no resolution materialized the bravery and patience temporarily collapsed. I offered comfort and logic and prayer, but my heart was still heavy when I walked into church for choir rehearsal. And then I saw that bulletin cover. The only thing we really know about Simeon is that he waited, and that at the end of his waiting he proclaimed God's sufficiency. I can die in peace now, he said to the Lord; you are faithful to your promises.

On the way out of church this morning I saw a friend who asked me how the waiting is going. She is waiting, too; her husband has been searching for work for months now. She asked me specifically if I would offer up this current suffering for her family, and I was glad to have a purpose for it. The idea of "offering it up" was something I'd never heard of before I went through RCIA, but it made immediate sense to me. It clarified a previously puzzling verse in the letter to the Colossians; it assured me that in yielding to an affliction, in deliberately uniting it to Christ's suffering on the cross, I could engage in a form of wordless prayer.

Our family's hour in the Adoration chapel is right after choir practice, and I prayed there for all the people I know who are waiting -- my own kid especially, but there are so many of us wrestling with one kind of waiting or another. I'm not the only Inigo Montoya in the bunch, I feel certain.

I hate waiting

I burst through the door when I got home, shouting "Isaiah 40!" (I was thinking specifically of the end, but I love the whole thing.) Something somewhere in that combination of spiritual seeking and parental encouragement and inner resilience eased the crisis yesterday, but I was still grateful for today's readings. Simeon had the kind of vision I want to have, with his certainty that the redemptive presence of God among us is enough. More than enough. Worth waiting for, however long it takes.