The Art of Taking Heart

Ugh... waiting.

And I know my voice echos with billions of others. No one enjoys the delay of gratification.

Yes.

I KNOW.

It's good for me.

The List of Bad Things that are Good For Me:

• Running, daily (HAHAHAHAHA!!!)

• Running, sporadically

• Washing aged dirty dishes

• Organic Chemistry

• Waking up before 7 am (which coincidentally has been part of Organic Chemistry)

• Composting

• Cleaning the apartment shower

• Skipping the coffee

• Setting and emptying the fruit fly traps

• Rough drafts

• Folding laundry

• WAITING

The wedding is T-minus six months as of Wednesday, but I've recently come up with a plan (read: coping mechanism) to somehow prove to myself that it's not actually as long as I think: I'll count how much time I still have to wait, and then count back that same amount of time and try to remember what I was doing. Six months ago I was on J-Term break, walking through two feet of snow in Massachusetts and soaking in the heat of the Wagners' wood-burning stove. Today, I'm nearly immune to sunburn, and the ice melts in my water bottle before I can take a swig.

...So much for that plan.

Any time is a long time when you are waiting.

When I was younger, my mom used to sing The Patience Song to me if I complained about waiting. It went something like this:

Have patience, have patience
don't be in such a hurry.
Have patience, have patience,
you'll only start to worry.
Remember, remember,
that God is patient too.
And think of all the times when others 
had to wait for you.

The song certainly served its purpose: I was careful not to voice complaints in her presence. But it never solved the problem. At the end of the song, I was still waiting.

Counting the Years

In the Old Testament, when you wait for freedom, you wait seven years.
When you wait for love, you wait fourteen years.
When you wait for rescue, you wait forty.
When you wait to return, you wait seventy.

SEVENTY!!!

Maybe God is the only one who likes waiting...

Exit 59 Church is currently teaching through Exodus, and today we talked about Moses' life after he fled from Egypt. He lived in the desert for 40 years, and he was 80 years old when God called him. Add that to the next 40 years he spent in the desert with a new crowd...

He lived in the desert for 80 years... dang.

And the whole time, the Hebrew people continued to be slaves in Egypt, as they had been for years and years and years before.

Why was God waiting to free the oppressed?

Why was God waiting?

And yet we are instructed to "Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord." -Psalm 27

God has some kind of timing I don't understand. He simply asks me to wait. The word for "wait" in Spanish also translates as "hope." Maybe the art of waiting is something like this: the act of patiently looking forward to God's will, which is "good and pleasing and perfect" while continuing to follow, grow, seek, and lift Him higher.

I hope I can making waiting look that graceful. ;)

Two (or, Give Me A Second)

It was one of the strangest, most wonderful Christmas gifts I had ever received. And it could have only come from Danny.

My younger brother has always been drawn to hands-on projects. At a younger age, this interest got him into everything from claymation creations to some dangerous situations with power tools. His latest creation of note is a bike helmet fitted to hold a video camera. Of course he's used it in public. He wouldn't be Danny if he didn't.

I would also like to note that his shirt in this photo reads: "Lutefisk: It'll put the fear of cod in you."

Although this is one my favorite Danny creations, my favorite was considerably smaller and so incredibly thoughtful that, seven months later, I'm still thinking about it.

It was Christmas Eve morning. We each took turns opening gifts. Danny had been able to participate in several art classes during the past semester, so a couple gifts under the tree were handmade. There was a clay pot for my mom with a hummingbird figure emerging from the lid and, when my turn came, Danny excitedly handed me a small, handmade paper box. Inside the box was a simple black string necklace with a metal pendant at the end, which said "I am" on a piece of hammered sheet metal cut in the shape of a "#2." I couldn't help but laugh when I saw it. "I am #2?!?!" It was so Danny; he has a habit of saying things that initially make no sense, but then, after you think about it, you're like... woah.

After the initial shock (not to mention the blow to my self-esteem) had passed, the pendent reminded me of Jesus' words in the gospels: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart... and love your neighbor as yourself." So, it's a reminder that I am second to God, and that my desires come second! 

Good one, Dan! 

Like any good English teacher, my initial interpretation satisfied me. But something was off. Loving God, then others, then self... unless my counting was dreadfully off, that put me at #3. Dang.

But, like any good English teacher, I allowed myself some slack. It was all about interpretation, after all... right? But the ambiguous significance of the pendant stuck with me as it hung over my desk for months, taunting me with the unsolved mystery behind the identity of number one.

When I moved out of the dorm and into an apartment for the summer, I again hung up the pendant at my desk. It just belonged there; if nothing else, at least it reminded me to be humble, to put God first... or... something...

The Art of Humility

But lately God has been showing me there's a bit more to the story. Or at least He's been trying to show me... I'd been too wrapped up in life to notice. It started with a gentle call to spend quality time with Him, not to rush through prayers and breeze through Bible verses like a fifty-page research paper. He wants me to enjoy my time with Him, to be still, to meditate, to talk, and to listen. I had forgotten to listen, to take in His presence and feel that very tangible feeling of relief as He sweeps through me and tugs at my worries and fears, hoping today I will let them go. I had fallen victim to time-consciousness rooted in selfishness, and the selfishness had appeared in other areas of my life as well. I realized that it's really hard to be any kind of decent fiancee when you're more concerned about yourself than your future husband. But selfishness is subtle. Silent. You feel like you're loving someone... and then... that awkward moment when you realize it was actually all about you. Oops.

The science of being imperfect is the study mistakes, the investigation of causation, and the creation of a solution. The problem with the latter is that, sometimes (and very un-science-like) the only solution is to realize we don't have one, and that we can't create one. This is where the art of humility comes into play. Sometimes, I just need to get over myself. I need help. I need God. It's not about me. I'm not number one.

Being number two is an attitude of humility. For the most part, our interactions can be classified as either between ourselves and people or ourselves and God (the only exceptions I can think of are marriage vows and public statements of faith). One entity to another. When I pray, talk to God, I want to surrender to His will and make His priorities mine. When interacting with people, I want to put all of their needs before mine. When it's me and them, they are first, I am second. It's servanthood. It's hard. I keep messing up. But God will cut me some slack. And He's always willing to give me a second. ;)