The English poet John Milton wrote that those who
serve only also stand and wait. I think I would go
further and say that THOSE WHO WAIT RENDER
THE HIGHEST FORM OF SERVICE. Waiting
requires more discipline, more self-control and
emotional maturity, more unshakable faith in our
cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more
sustaining love in our hearts that all the greatest
deeds go by the name of action.

Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life -
there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have
to wait. It must be an important mystery because
there is so much waiting in our lives.

Everyday is filled with those little moments of
waiting (testing our patience and our nerves,
schooling us in self-control.) We wait for meals to
be served, for a letter to arrive, for a friend to call or
show up for a date. We wait in line at cinemas and
theaters, concerts and circuses. Our airline
terminals, railway stations and bus depots are
great temples of waiting filled with men and women
who wait in joy for the arrival of a loved one - or wait
in sadness to say goodbye and give the last wave
of hand. We wait for springs to come - or autumn -
for the rains to begin and stop.

And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to
maturity. We wait for those inner voices that tell us
when we are ready for the next stop.

We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first
promotion. We wait for success and recognition.
We wait to grow up - to reach the stage where we
make our own decisions. We cannot remove this
waiting from our lives. It is a p art of the tapestry of
living - the fabric in which the threads are woven to
tell the story of our lives.

Yet current philosophies would have us forget the
need to wait "grab all the gusto you can get." So
reads one of America's greatest beer ads - get it
now! Instant pleasure, instant transcendence. Do
not wait for anything. Life is short - eat, drink and
be merry because tomorrow you will die. And so
they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and
irresponsible freedom- pre-marital sex and extra
marital affairs - they warn against attachments and
commitments - against expecting anything of
anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of
us - against dropping any anchors in the currents
of our life that will cause us to hold and wait.

This may be the correct prescription for pleasure -
but even that is fleeting and doubtful - what was it
Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of
pleasure - "Past reason hunted, and once had,
past reason hated." Not if we wish to be real
human beings, spirit as well as flesh, soul as well
as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if we never
learn to wait, we will never learn to love someone
other than ourselves.

For most of all waiting means waiting for someone
else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday
like a stray wind of leaf falling from a tree. Anyone
who has loved knows how much waiting goes into
it - how much waiting is important for love to grow,
to flourish through a lifetime.



Why is this? Why can we not have it right now
what we so desperately want and need? Why must
we wait - two years, three years - and seemingly
waste so much time? You might as well ask why a
tree should take so lon g to bear fruit - the seed to
flower - carbon to change to diamond.

There is no simple answer - no more than there is
to life's other demands -having to say goodbye to
someone you love because either you or they have
made other commitments; or because they have to
grow and find the meaning of their own lives -
having yourself to leave home and loved ones to
find your own path - good-byes, like waiting, are
also sacraments of our lives.

All we know is that growth - the budding, the
flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to
give each other a time to grow. There is no way we
can make someone else truly love us or we them,
except through time. So we give each other that
mysterious gift of waiting - of being present without
asking demands and rewards. There is nothing
harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and
sincerity of our love. But there is life in the gift we
give.

So lovers wait for each other - until they can see
things the same way - or let each other freely see
things in quite different ways.

There are times when lovers hurt each other and
cannot regain the balance of intimacy of the way
they were. They have to wait - in silence - but still
present to each other - until the pain subsides to
an ache and then only a memory and the threads
of the tapestry can be woven together again in a
single love story.

What do we lose when we refuse to wait; when we
try to find shortcuts through life - then we try to
incubate love and rush blindly and foolishly into a
commitment we are neither mature nor responsible
enough to assume? We lose the hope of truly
loving or of being loved. Think of all the great love
stories of history and literature - isn't it of their very
essence that they are filled with this strange but
common mystery - that waiting is part of the
substance - the basic fabric against which the
story of that true love is written.

How can we ever find either life or true love if we are
too impatient to wait for it?

***********************************


Waiting is a good thing only if something is worth
waiting for.

How will you know if it's worth it? Gut feel.



What if you don't trust your gut? Pray. You will be
enlightened. Trust me.

Is it wrong to expect while waiting? It's not wrong,
but it will increase your chances of heartbreak and
disappointment if things don't work out in the end.

Is it good to expect while waiting? It is better to
HOPE.

What's the difference between hoping and
expecting? HOPING means you're open to either
side of the coin landing though you're more inclined
to believe that things will turn out well. EXPECTING
means you're thinking single-track...which won't do
you much good at all.

What's the difference between waiting and
expecting? EXPECTING is waiting for something
TO DEFINITELY HAPPEN. WAITING is staying
where you are, but not necessarily expecting
something to happen definitely.

Do you need assurance from someone you're
waiting for while you're waiting? Ideally, yes. But
realistically, do you really want assurance from this
person? It's so easy to just point at something and
make that the reason why you're waiting ("Because
she said..." "Because he told me that...").

With WAITING, all you really can rely on are 3
things: your gut feel, your heart and mind. Just
YOURSELF, not anyone else.

So should you wait? What does your gut say? How
does your heart feel? What does your mind think?
If they're saying different things, keep asking
yourself these 3 questions (and pray!) until you get
a solid answer.

THEN you'll know if he or she is worth waiting for.

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