On Waiting

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts: who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait."

                                      John Milton, “On His Blindness”

~ 

I have just returned home from a trip to Provo and Seattle. This trip involved a lot of waiting: waiting in the security line, waiting to board the plane, waiting for take-off, to land, waiting at the baggage carousel, and for my ride.  And that is just one day.  It got me thinking about waiting and how I value the time I spend waiting.

Sometimes, waiting is the best part.  Remember being a kid and waiting for Christmas and the excitement that would build? For a few years, when I was seven and eight, I took waiting a bit further—I waited up for Santa Clause himself. My mom put the Christmas tree in the corner of the living room.  It seems impossible now, but my kid sized body fit very easily between the tree stand and the wall.  This vantage point also put me near the fireplace—the point of entrance I intended to surveil until I caught Santa making his entrance.  I lay there for hours, snug inside my sleeping bag, underneath the pine-scented boughs and I waited.  As the hours ticked by my anticipation grew and I imagined the great joy of unwrapping all the presents Santa would bring. 

Fatigue overcame my childish stakeout plans.  I struggled against it, trying to will myself awake—to no avail.  One moment I had my eyes glued to the black metal screen over the fireplace, and the next, it was Christmas morning. I was surrounded by presents, the Christmas stockings were bulging with candy. Somehow, Santa had come and gone without waking me. I wasn’t disappointed at all. There were presents to open. Besides, there was always next year.

Sometimes waiting is more of an ordeal.

That is how I would describe waiting to reach puberty. I was one of those girls who was a late bloomer.  Starting in sixth grade, one by one I could see the bra straps show up on the others girls and hear them talking about their time of the month. By seventh grade I persuaded my mom to buy me a training bra, even if it was only cosmetic—I was as flat as an ironing board, and frankly, I was beginning to worry.  Eighth grade came and went with no improvement. By ninth grade my mom told me if things didn’t change by my birthday, she would take me to the gynecologist.  That did not sound like fun so I began praying that my body would kick it into gear already.

At last, the day came. And it definitely did not feel like Christmas.  I got horrible cramps and felt sick. I went to the office and called my mom to pick me up.  By the time I got home and went to the bathroom, the waiting was officially over.  My mom gave me a Motrin and I went to bed. 

Sometimes, we are not waiting for something, but we are waiting on someone else.

For four days last week I was with my parents.  I was there to help them, to drive them to doctors’ appointments and just talk with them.  My parents’ health is failing them, but they still wait on each other—well, mostly my dad waits on my mom. Every morning he makes her breakfast of instant oatmeal, he brings her water and the phone, and a hundred different things.  There is not much my dad can do now, except wait.  He spends his days waiting. From conversations we’ve had, I know he is waiting to die. But he hangs on to serve.

One of the things I did while in Utah was take my mom to the doctor’s office. I had called the day before; her legs were swelling because they were retaining water due to failing kidney function.  The only appointment available was for three in the afternoon. We finally saw the doctor at four thirty. While we were waiting, I asked one of our fellow waiting roomer to take this picture.

 I wanted to capture this moment because I realized as I was sitting in that waiting room that there might not be many more opportunities. I wanted to remember my parents at this time in their lives, this time of waiting.

John Milton’s poem, “On His Blindness” is one of my favorite poems. Milton wrote this poem after he had been struck with blindness. He had spent years at school and in study, learning multiple languages, reading and traveling extensively. After the English Civil War and the creation of the English republic by Oliver Cromwell, Milton was able to use his scholarship and language skills in service of the state, and, as he would most likely see it—in service to God.  But things do not always turn out as we have planned. Just as he was losing his sight, the English republic died. A warrant was issued for his arrest and he went into hiding: blind, impoverished, a political pariah in Restoration England. Yet it is from these years of darkness that Milton created his master work—Paradise Lost. 

In his sonnet, Milton writes, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Somehow, I cannot imagine Milton’s kind of waiting as an idle thing, wasting the time he spent hiding from the authorities in day-dreaming of restoring his beloved republic (though who is to say these thoughts didn’t occupy his mind). Rather than remain stuck in futile imaginings, powerless to effect that change, Milton took his dreams and ideas and wove them into his writing, into one of the greatest works of English literature. Or, I should say, dictated them, since he never actually saw his own work.

I admit, I am a bit of a dreamer.

I spend a lot of my waiting time in thought. Even when I am doing other things, like folding the laundry. And yet, I also feel an anxiety to turn these thoughts into words; to turn my waiting time into a more actively engaged Miltonesque sort of waiting. 

Waiting in this way becomes more than lost time, it becomes contemplation and meditation. It can be deeply moving, like the time I spent holding a sister in my ward’s hand as she waited to die. I was honored to be there, even though I did not know her well.  Waiting can give us opportunities to observe and reflect and to plan ahead. I dreamed up this blog post with waiting somewhere for something.

This is my personal challenge and my challenge to you.

2013—Our Jubilee Year

 
Those who know me well, know that in the recent past our family has been through some trying times. In a nutshell, we struggled with how to help our daughter who found herself in an abusive relationship. Initially, one of our biggest challenges was to realize the seriousness of the problem, and to pull our collective heads out of the 'it's just a phase she is going through and she will grow out of it' sand. Arianna helped us do this by escalating her behavior to the point we could not just chalk it up to growing pains. We had to take an opened eyed look at what was going on, with her, with our family structure. We ended up sending our daughter to wilderness therapy and then therapeutic boarding school and sending ourselves to family therapy.

It wasn't fun. In fact, it was the most painful experience of my life—by far. 
 
Waking my daughter up at five in the morning, telling her I loved her and that these two strangers were going to take her away to a place she could get some help--that was the toughest thing I have ever done. And we were sending her to a place thousands of miles away from us. I was placing my daughter's wellbeing into the hands of complete strangers, trusting that they could help my daughter in a way that I had failed to do. 

The guilt was crushing. 
 
I was a failure as a parent. The proof was standing there in a black leather jacket ready to handcuff my daughter if she gave them any trouble (We had to sign a written transportation contract that specifically allowed the transport team to restrain her). How do you prepare for that moment? How would my daughter ever forgive me? Could we ever recover from the breach that had developed over the past year?

But we did get through it—with a lot of help.

We had the help of great therapists. Tim Lowe at Outback Therapeutic. Joanna Legerski at Summit Preparatory. Dr. Bridges at Duke Family Studies Center. 
 
We had the help of family and friends who showered us with love and time and care at a time when just going to church and trying to sing the sacrament songs was an exercise in trying not to cry over lyrics that seared instead of soothed. Try singing "Love at Home" when your teenager has just told you that they hate you and demands that you emancipate them. 
 
2011 became what I have since termed the Year of Discontent. 2012 became the Year of Healing. And 2013—the Jubilee Year.

The word "jubilee" originates in the Law of Moses. It was a yearlong celebration. Slaves were to be set free. Debts to be forgiven. Everyone was to have a fresh start, a clean slate. The year started with the blast from a ram's horn and a celebratory shout.

January 7, 2013 marks the start of our Jubilee. That is the day we received Arianna's acceptance letter to Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. (Interestingly, VCU's mascot is the Ram). 

 As I read the letter I was overcome and I literally began jumping up and down shouting for joy. I did not want to wait to tell Arianna the good news until our Wednesday night call. So I called the school, hoping they would pass a message to Arianna. Instead of taking a message, after I told the office manager what the message was, he connected me to her classroom. I decided in that moment to play it very serious. "Arianna," I said, pitching my voice lower and talking at a deliberate pace, as if I had some dreadful news. "I have some news. . . YOU GOT INTO VCU ARTS!!!" We both began squealing and jumping for joy.

This was a triumph, I told her. One that was so much sweeter because of where she was and where she had been. Just a year earlier Arianna had believed that her life was over, that her dreams were all crushed and gone. All that self-doubt and fear was gone in that moment, replaced by this deep and intense feeling of joy and gratitude.

This feeling remained with me for the rest of 2013: through Arianna's graduation from Summit, our trip to Europe, the start of her freshman year and the successful completion of her first semester of college. 
 
One of my friends asked right before Arianna came home from school if I was stressed out by her return. My reply was that I felt the opposite. All I felt was joy and happiness. I wanted to kill the fatted calf and throw a party. I could barely stop myself from dancing a jig right there.

During this Jubilee of mine, I have on occasion asked myself if I should restrain some of my outward expressions of joy. I worried that my expressions might be painful to others who were in the middle of their own family crisis. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings or imply that our daughter's recovery was anything short of miraculous, or that we were somehow more blessed or lucky than parents whose children continue to make bad choices. Or that we were somehow the best parents ever and that is why our daughter was doing so well. 
 
I had blamed myself earlier. One day in particular I remember feeling particularly awful. It was right before we sent Arianna away and I was racked with guilt. My internal monologue went something like this. "I am the world's worst mother. If there was an award for worst mother of the year, I would win. If I was a good mother, my daughter would have talked to me sooner about her boyfriend, and she would not have made harmful choices. If I was a discerning mother, I would have been able to see the problem sooner and acted sooner." This internal monologue was on a continuous loop in my head. 
 
As you can imagine, it was hard to get anything done. So, I and my internal monologue went for a walk. As I was walking, I heard the whisperings of the spirit interrupt my monologue with this phrase, "If parents are to be judged by the choices their children make, then Heavenly Father is a huge failure too. One third of his children rebelled in heaven." I was properly rebuked and at the same time felt a great sense of relief—I was not responsible for my daughter's choices. I was only responsible for mine.

That didn't make me less sad for some of my daughter's choices. And it doesn't make me less happy now that she is making much better ones.

Of all the lessons I have learned, one of the greatest has been the great mercy God has for his children. It is this mercy that I have been celebrating this year. The mercy that helped us find a way through all our fears and pain and hurt and healed our broken hearts and knitted them together stronger and better than they were before. The mercy that forgave our mistakes and let us start over again with a clean slate.

In one of the last letters I wrote to Arianna while she was in Montana, I quoted these lines from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show like God's

When mercy seasons justice.

 
2013 has been my Jubilee year. I don't know what 2014 will bring—this may be our year of farewells as our parents are aging rapidly, and Arianna is putting her missionary papers together. Whatever it brings, I plan on holding on to the gratitude—come what may.