The Wait for Better Days

This past year I experienced a wait — my husband deployed shortly after we were married with no specific return date, and I can tell you waiting with no end in sight will test the patience of the strongest. Not that I’d ever claim an award in patience; perhaps it made the challenge feel a little pointed, a task that would strengthen a severe weakness. Sometimes in coping with the wait, I’d wonder if I ought to just try to pretend like I wasn’t married. Not that I would be functionally single again, but perhaps it would be easier to pretend that I was simply on my own, that there wasn’t a husband who I was so eager to see again? My husband and I briefly considered if I ought to keep my apartment in D.C. I’d be in Virginia Beach after we got married until he deployed, and then after he left, go back to my life in D.C. Go back to a routine I’d lived for years without him, perhaps that would make it easier. For many reasons I rejected that choice. My life was now in Virginia Beach with him. Whether he was there or not, I’d rather be in the house filled with our happy newlywed memories. I’d rather be surrounded by a community that was walking a similar path. And I’d rather not pay for a D.C. rent and our mortgage.

But that thought of trying to pretend that I wasn’t waiting stayed with me. Would it hurt less? Are waits better if you have no concept that you’re actively waiting?

On a hot, muggy day this summer, I stood in a hangar watching the skies, surrounded by friends who had also been waiting for this day for a long nine months. Indeed, living here among friends who were living my same reality always served as a precious reminder that we were waiting, but we were waiting together. Early in the deployment, a group of us texted about how we’d hold hands in the hangar one day, knowing that all that waiting was finally at an end. We’d remind each other constantly that we were one day closer, one month closer. We didn’t know the specific end date, just knew we were getting closer all the time.

All the dreaming and anticipation for that reunion burst out in a sprint towards our loved ones. Gathered in their arms and holding them, thinking, “Yes, this is what I’ve been waiting for.”

Advent is waiting, we know this. And I’ll say, after a deployment the weeks of Advent and Lent feel very short now. The ending is always clearly spelled out in the church calendar. But it’s a little act of what we do all the time in our lives: we learn to wait and wait well on a timeline beyond our control. These seasons will breeze by quickly, but our waits don’t. And even if it feels like you’re not waiting for anything in particular, our faith reminds us we are. We are always waiting.

After a nine-month deployment I assumed I had this waiting thing down. Maybe now I was, at last, a patient person. But my husband and I have entered a different season of waiting and longing, praying that God will grow our family. And to be blunt, I have not waited well. I have felt anger and frustration, not much better than a child throwing a tantrum in their impatience. Earlier this fall I’d hoped I could write this piece about waiting well, my husband safe at home and a baby on the way. And I could give a cheery pep talk to others still waiting, secretly thinking that if we all patiently wait our turn we eventually receive good things, as I had already had to wait for nine months and had earned a speedier answer to prayers. But it turns out I’m here with the rest of humanity, still waiting and fighting my own discontent.

Welcome to Advent, where we are a discontent, anxious, grumbling, even despairing people trying to decide if we should pretend like there is no wait and everything is fine. Or do we fight God every step of the way because waiting without an end date is hard? I can run long distances, but I can’t imagine running a race where I don’t know when the finish line is. And yet this is asked of us in this life again and again. The Bible is just a story of people waiting. Doesn’t that feel intentional? The pages are filled with longing — Israel waiting to leave Egypt, then immediately longing to go back to Egypt, then leaving the desert for a land of prosperity, then not wanting to leave the desert because the obstacles to live in the promised land looked a little too hard. A people waiting hundreds of years for a promise to be fulfilled. Now that’s a wait. I know time is nothing to God, but it sure means a lot to us on this little marble.

In past years I’ve always focused on how magical Advent is, how beautiful heavenly glory intermingled with this messed up place is. This year I’m more in tune with the fierce longing that is in these weeks leading up to Christmas, the impatient toe-tapping of the world. I’ve been thinking on this quote a lot by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.”

I know waiting alone is the worst feeling a person can have. For those long nine months of deployment I was not alone, and what could have been a lonely, dark year was filled to the brim with really dear friends. In the dark nights of the soul during that time I would remind myself, “I am not the only one waiting.” And Advent beckons all of us out of our own private little waits to remind us of the larger one, one that we share with this whole world that longs to have sickness, grief, and death wiped away forever. But we’re still waiting and it’s hard.

But “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” like on a night I felt discouraged and my husband pointed to our tree saying, “Look, Ali,”  taking in the little twinkle of our Christmas tree in the darkness. Not a bright light that illuminated the whole house, but just a little warmth that made the darkness not quite so dark. Like a child in a manger that didn’t conquer Roman rule, He was still enough. A promise fulfilled, a God at work in the waiting, whether we understand or not. But we’re waiting, and one day, at long last we will say, “Yes, this is always what we’ve been longing for and waiting for.”