Wait (1 of ?)

**This is the first in a series of posts. At this point it looks to be about two or three posts long but it isn't finished yet.**

 As an internal processor I have a difficult time communicating in the middle of situations. Hence the lack of writing for over a year. I've had the smallest breakthrough, the slightest hint of understanding, and I'm ready to share this process. I only ask that you be gentle. I still do not respond very well to people deciding and telling me how I should react to a given situation. I am fragile. I still do not understand very much of why. And though you may have the best of intentions sometimes I have a hard time looking past your insensitive wording to those intentions. But it makes me feel a little more secure just to state my need.

I've always been a doer. A go-getter. A fighter. Most definitely a goody-two-shoes related to "an overdeveloped sense of justice." The answer was always "Yes. I can do that." Even if it meant asking a missionary family to take me back to Guatemala with them before asking my parents' permission. At 8 years old. Didn't mom realize that this is what I am supposed to do? Yes, she did, but it wasn't time yet. I had to wait until I was 12 years old, she said. Once that magic number came I had to wait an additional four years until the opportunity FINALLY arrived.

For me, doing comes naturally. Waiting does not. Even commuting makes me feel like I'm wasting time. Hence all the running between classes on campus even though I was rarely late. A dear friend had to teach me how to stroll. But strolling is a waste of time, don't you know! Making quilts, doing crafts, raising children, a 9-5 job. I always knew that wasn't the life for me. Too mundane. Too boring. Not enough DOING for God. I am energized in another country, communicating with people despite cultural barriers, being mistaken for a native. Every day life is a drag.

*Spoiler* God has been teaching me a little bit about waiting. Forcing me to balance out the "Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest" with the "Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand against all the evil schemes of the devil." Or, as John Piper put it so well in his study When I Don't Desire God "...balance out the concepts of life as rest and life as fight."

It's all so counter-intuitive. God wants our actions to accompany our faith, to "go out and make disciples of all nations," to "to proclaim good news to the poor... to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Lk 4:18-19).” I identify with that. I'm energized by that. Apparently that's not the whole picture.

I thought I knew how to listen. How to be quiet. How to do the "boring" stuff. "Be still and know that I am God (Ps. 46:10)." On the surface it doesn't seem that complicated. Know that I am God. Okay... You are God. You are God. You are God. You are Goooddd (cue reverberating baritone). Should I make a mantra out of it? Sit with my legs crossed, thumbs touching middle fingers, eyes closed, humming? Are you getting the idea that I have no idea what the heck I'm talking about? The truth is, for most of my life I didn't to wait much, to listen long, to hear God's voice. He blessed me beyond understanding with a gift of communication. Not with other people, but with him. A two-way conversation. On a regular basis. Besides God revealing to me His Good News of salvation, that is the most amazing thing I have ever experienced.

But the moment I was informed the reason to my illness, my inability to stay awake and lucid for more than a few hours at a time, he went silent. That dreaded word: CANCER immediately cut our phone lines.

Looking back I remember He developed a theme of impressions once I started nursing school; "relax, be at peace, enjoy this moment." But nothing in my experience so far makes me wait as expectantly as silence. Absence. Hope in something unseen. Tasted but unsavored. Fading memories of something glorious.

Psalm 130

A song of ascents.  
¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;
 ² Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
   to my cry for mercy.
 ³ If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,
   Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,
   so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
 ⁵ I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
   and in his word I put my hope.
⁶ I wait for the Lord
   more than watchmen wait for the morning,
   more than watchmen wait for the morning.
 ⁷ Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
   for with the LORD is unfailing love
   and with him is full redemption.
⁸ He himself will redeem Israel
   from all their sins.

"More than the watchman waits for the morning." I can identify with that. The night is limited vision, heightened hearing, acute nerves, deadly animals and men. The morning is another night survived, renewed hope, warmth, waking family and friends. I have been waiting to once again hear the momentary whisper of God for three years now. Six years for our cherished conversation. Six years since cancer somehow necessitated this silent phase. It has been a dark time. A hard time where God seems far off, dangers close at hand.

Death is in my very mind.

Despite living much of the American Dream, experiencing many wondrous things, I was falling apart. My limbs didn't even feel like my limbs. Were they mine? Or the transparency of an apparition? Perhaps I wasn't alive, but a soul stuck between worlds, restless even in death. Only pain could solidify my flesh to my own eyes. Pain and blood. Even now, stray too far from my medication and I feel as if chunks of my flesh begin to fall out. Always starting with a tennis ball section of my left trapezoid, then a chunk the size of a golf ball from my left forearm, then my right hand. If left unchecked there comes a point where I cannot walk, I cannot even lift my own head for it is only attached by a thread.

The thoughts of death once kept at bay by the voice of God screamed at me, clawed at my flesh, what little flesh was left after the ravaging of depression. J.K. Rowling chose to anthropomorphize this sensation thus: "Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself...soul-less and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life." Perhaps the worst part about depression is that last sentence. No matter what happy memories you have or the quantity of them, depression steals those beautiful experiences leaving only the worst ones behind.