Advent Day Two
Parenting through a pandemic has taken multiple shapes for me. First, it was kinda surreal and the weather was beautiful. We did a few adventurous things out in the wilderness, ate breakfast for dinner & in lieu of trying to keep up with the last two months of online school we decided to read as many fun books as possible.
But then summer came, it was hot and the days dragged on. I began to treat each day as two days: before lunch and after lunch. Filling the time without people to socialize with or places to go became difficult. Getting my own work done became harder. No matter how much my husband and I took off our plate or rearranged our schedules, it didn’t work.
Then the start of a new school year came and we got word that school would remain virtual. The start date for in-person learning was pushed back to October and then November and now there’s no new start date in sight. At this point waiting for school to resume began to feel almost unbearable. Each day became a marathon. Not because we don’t love having our kids around, but the administrative skill required to help kids with virtual school was a full time job. And then lack of structure and schedule began to take an emotional toll on all of us. The kids began joking that I was forgetting what I was saying half way through my sentences which is usually a sign my brain is starting to quit on me. Something about no longer knowing when/if school would start “in a few months” made everything more difficult.
I’m not sure when the world will start moving again or when schools will reopen, but I do know that I want to be present with the people I love, attentive to the Spirit at work in this world and patient with the constraints around us. And so I’ve been contemplating the idea of waiting.
I’ve learned a lot about waiting this year. The pandemic has revealed to me that I am an urgent person, not particularly a patient person. But this year has also revealed our nation’s inability to wait— shopping, partying, traveling all continues. We’re on the go. We enter this Christmas season wanting a distraction from the year behind us, but advent asks us not to be distracted. But to wait. To become attentive to the seed of hope that is growing before us.
Waiting is a process of attuning ourselves to God’s love at work. It’s contemplating the promises of Christ and his presence in every moment, every activity, every aspect of our life and world. It’s drawing our attention to Christ and expressing honestly the anguish waiting can bring, the sorrow of unanswered prayers, the longing to see something dead resurrected. Waiting involves trying to envision the fully realized hope of restored lives in a restored world and to allow that vision to cultivate a patient, active waiting within us. This kind of waiting can transform us into a people who permeate hope to the world around us. Henry Nouen describes this kind of patience beautifully:
“Patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her.”
