I've spent this 1st week of Advent pretty much in waiting. Earlier this week, I experienced what waiting for my Grab car can feel like in a city like Bangkok, quite renowned for its traffic jams. A wait of more than 10 minutes was quite the norm. Waiting in the jams, waiting for the plane that was delayed and waiting as the plane flew me back to Singapore. It wasn't a pleasant wait at all with a fever and the short flight from Bangkok felt unending. And then came the wait to disembark, the wait for the luggage.
I waited through the night with a high temperature, just to wait some more at my doctor's the next morning. (She was very kind to see me earlier than expected!) I waited for my temperature to drop, for the cough to stop, for the alternating shivers and perspiration to end. When it is a viral fever, I have learned that there is nothing anyone can do and I just got to wait. I waited in bed the past 3 days to feel more strength, waited for the time I could finally sit up to eat without seeing stars.
Time passed me by without waiting and still I have to wait.
To be honest, I got tired of waiting. It is more annoying to wait this time because I have another trip this Saturday to prepare for. And since it is a retreat, I feel all the more the need to prepare well. It explains the growing frustration that I seem to have wasted 3 days sleeping. And I don't even know if I'll be fit to fly by Saturday though the fever subsided yesterday. More than the physical readiness, I have not packed or run any of my errands. I just don't feel ready for the retreat at all levels.
It is no coincidence that we have just begun this season of Advent. A time of waiting. Mary and Joseph waited 9 months for the arrival of the Son of God. The Jews waited through generations for God to send the Messiah to deliver them from the hands of their enemies. There was a lot of waiting, of anticipation. Unlike my kind of waiting, where I know that if God wills, I will recover my health and I know how that roughly looks like and feels like, the kind of waiting Mary, Joseph and the Jewish people were involved in weren't so defined. In fact, baby Jesus had to wait in Mary's womb too!
But whatever the wait may be like, could it be that the one common purpose (though it may not be the sole purpose) of waiting is to learn to let go of being in control? Of learning that if I care to be honest, I cannot control time and viruses, cures and health. I cannot control when God comes and how He comes and in what form He comes. I may have my plans of what I feel I need to do before my retreat, in preparation for my retreat. But isn't it another timely reminder that I am not the God of my retreat? Can I stop being panicky about being out of control and let go of my fixed ideas of how things need to be and so be finally able to trustingly fall into the unknown of my mysterious God who never fail to surprise me?
Perhaps, there isn't a better way for me to begin Advent. And this is how I am beginning. By allowing myself to lose control more and more. In the waiting, to come to a more authentic self-knowledge and God-knowledge. To learn to be human. And then, perhaps, in my more authentic humanity, I can truly welcome into my emptied heart the King of kings, the humble Child, the Messiah.
I shall wait, in humility and poverty.
How will you wait?
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