For a few weeks, I’ve been carrying a secret around with me.
It isn’t the fun kind of secret, like a surprise party you plan for a friend or a pregnancy you just aren’t quite ready to share with everyone. No, this is the kind that throbs in the back of your brain like a drumbeat you can’t ever quite get rid of.
A few weeks ago, during a routine screening, a doctor discovered a lump, and this sent me down a winding path of testing. One test would ask more questions than it answered, and so another would be ordered. The waiting was the hardest part. My mind told me all the comforting stories and statistics, but there was always the ‘what-if’ hovering nearby, waiting to land. It could never actually leave. I told myself, as I walked from hallway to hallway for the next test, that I would be fine; I would be strong; I would be ok.
Just a few days ago, I got the best news: an all-clear, and I felt myself breathe fully for the first time in many days.
It is only in the waiting that we learn what real peace feels like, how its truth rises to the surface, the rich cream above the thin, milky platitudes we tell ourselves.
It is only in the waiting that our focus settles, the world stills, and the ranking system of what is important in our lives becomes perfectly razor-sharp in its clarity.
It is only in the waiting that we remember how very little control we have over our bodies, our futures, our plans. In the waiting, we learn surrender.
It is only in the waiting that we discover the actual value of a life, the vapor and the breath that it is before it is gone.
Waiting is never the fun part, but it is the necessary part. It shifts us, adjusts us, realigns our hearts.
And so we wait, knowing that we will be changed by it. We know that, when we are asked to wait, again and again, that the waiting is never wasted. It becomes the chisel that chips away our broken pieces, the fire that burns us down to our core. It is only in the waiting that we can be changed into the person we long to become, and though we never want the waiting, it is the way that will bring us back home.
