Waiting

I'm listening to the wind in the trees outside our family room's windows. It's a quiet neighborhood, mostly, except on trash/recycling pick-up days. Seems to take an unusually high number of big trucks to do all of that for some reason. I have been here for nearly a month now, and it's slowly beginning to feel like home and not an extended vacation trip with an adventure in home renovation package. Which means I can find a lot of places on my own without asking my sister or brother-in-law for directions, I put a North Carolina license plate on my car, have gotten a haircut at a local salon, and even became an official resident today with the acquisition of my North Carolina driver's license.

I have to admit, though, that it all still feels odd to not be expected anywhere in the way I have known. Setting a disciplined schedule for myself is not something I've ever been all that good at, and having all kinds of time that is mostly mine to schedule has not yet inspired much discipline for any kind of routine. Part of it is the waiting factor - knowing that when the baby arrives she will be the focus of the routine and be my 'boss' in a more complete way than any church has ever been. I pushed myself hard when I first got here to get the major things done in the house so it would be livable for us before baby comes. Now that those things are done, I'm simply waiting. And I've definitely never been good at that.

One of the opportunities in this transition for me is the chance to learn to go slow, to relax, to sit still for more than a minute at a time. Some days I've enjoyed that. Others, I've allowed the open time to make me feel useless -- a learned perspective, I know, from my workaholic parents that they passed on in abundance to both me and my sister. How often have I yearned for just this kind of space during the decade of frantic church life?

Truth is, I miss it all madly. And I know, in the very same breath that's filled with grief, this is where God would have me be right now. Learning to trust in open space, learning to find the life present in the waiting, listening to the wind in the trees in the middle of the afternoon.