We’ve all stood in front of the microwave waiting for the one minute to end. Seems like forever. My four-year-old can barely stand it. After 5 seconds, “It’s ready, Mom!”. Try let it go for the full minute and I have him screaming, pulling up a chair, reaching for the pause button as he’s tortured beyond restraint.

 

I don’t like waiting either. Perhaps, Master T inherited that from me?  If the meeting is scheduled for 10:00, it’s 10:00. 10:10 is late. 10:30 is just out of order. Is there such a thing as good waiting and bad waiting? And how do we know when it’s good and to just let it go? I’m the girl whose day is managed by the clock. Even when there’s ‘nothing’ to do. Meditation any time after 06:30 is just counter-productive since either your kids are up banging on the bedroom door or singing ‘Barney’ over the baby monitor or the neighbour’s kids or dogs are up and about. It’s no longer still. And one’s calm and peace vanishes like a thief in the night.  The struggle is real.

 

As a singleton, my beloved friend, Sandy, with dependants, would jokingly tell me to “get a cat or a dog or something” since I was habitually the first to be ready or arrive at any social engagement, impatiently tapping my fingers, calling, texting, “where are you guys?”. In other words, I needed some distraction to make me as late as others, so that we could all be on time together. Even then, I was blissfully unaware that my affinity for time was an indication of a deeper underlying issue. My need to control.

 

That’s at the heart of being impatient, not waiting, a need to control everything which is ultimately impossible. I was failing dismally, in all areas of my life.  The more I tried to control, the more I lost it, the more anxious I became. The biological clock is real and mine was banging like a drum with no rhythm. The waiting for a husband, for a child, the things that everyone around me seemed to have, made me feel insignificant, inadequate and above all, lonely. I even started to believe that I had been ‘bewitched’. It had to be something ‘other’, surely, it couldn’t be me? Why had God abandoned me, in such a cruel way?

 

Looking back, that is so melodramatic. Again, perhaps Master T inherited that from me? When God was trying to whisper, to coax me to listen to Him, my shrieking hormones, coupled with my past hurts and unresolved losses, drowned out any stillness that I so desperately needed. It was a period in my life when I had some of my scariest, most disturbing dreams. I call them my ‘snake dreams’ since that was a common theme in my reality and sub-conscious. This is how He tried to turn up the volume, but I was still distracted. I can’t recall a particular event or moment that got me to my point of no return. Rather, it was sheer emotional and physical exhaustion. I eventually got so tired of all the drama, most self-created and indulged, that my body physically and mentally opted out.

 

To be continued…