Waiting.....

    Waiting... is that something you ever think about?  Worry about?  Hate doing?   When I thought about things today, after a variety of different encounters, as I thought about the last six months (for that's how long we've been at this cancer battle), I thought a lot about waiting.  We wait at stoplights, we wait for other people, we wait for things to happen that might never happen.  I wait too... Timothy has told me that it is my new job - to wait.  I told him promptly that I stunk at my new job - because waiting means you need patience, calm and peace.. but above all, patience.  And nothing is really more infuriating than waiting... for appointments, for doctors, for phone call backs, for CT results, for a baby to make her appearance, for chemo drugs to finish dripping in... and all that waiting involves different parts of your brain.  The whole - you have to be patient - factor - that's SO hard.... let's be honest here... it's more fun to have your teeth pulled out by the dentist than to sit on tenterhooks (I remember reading about what those were at one point but I've promptly forgotten) waiting for the doctor to see you, to give you the end progress report of how you are doing.
     For waiting brings its own set of problems - waiting means that something is a bit unknown, "what will the test show?", "why is the doctor taking so long?" "what if the baby flips around again and we have to change our birth plan again?" "when will this treatment take effect and how much will it do?  Will it take this cancer away or will things just be shrunk down a little bit or will we see big improvements and why, oh why, do phone calls and doctors appointments seem to be filled with difficult news?"  "When will I finally realize that this is the new reality in life and accept it and gracefully proceed onwards?"  That last question of waiting has been niggling me a lot lately.  It's easy to try and pretend, especially on "off chemo" weeks, that things are relatively normal (though you'd think the delivered meals, help with dear little Ava and meds and my PICC line and my scar would be enough reminders that our life journey has hit some very bumpy territory).  I still have my hair (though thinning and shedding everywhere!), I can wear long sleeves to cover the PICC, I've been told that I look good so maybe I can pretend, pretend that this isn't our reality, that this isn't what is happening in our lives right now, that I am still normal, that I'm still me.
     Yet sometimes, I don't know who "me" is anymore... that's hard to wait for too, for the acceptance, for the grace, for the reality of facing who we are and what's going on squarely in the face and making decisions in the best possible way in the face of that awful reality... how to go on, how to make the best of things, how to step forward in faith when the waiting is there.  And yet, there's that little still voice that talks about Christian waiting - to wait upon the Lord, to trust and obey, to walk with the Lord in the light of His Word... difficult sometimes, to read that Word and to truly trust that in the waiting of our days, that God is there, is working, sometimes behind the scenes, like the old metaphor of us not seeing the big picture, the whole quilt, only the messy underside whereas God sees the whole beautiful work of art that our lives are being knit together into.  And so, as I wait for chemo #8 to start tomorrow morning, bright and early at 8 am... I wait, sometimes very anxiously and imperfectly but in hope, that God sees me and our family and knows what we need before we even ask...as hard as that is to reconcile at times.  What will the meds do this time?  How will I tolerate things?  Questions that we will have to wait for... for answers, for truths to be revealed and for faith to be strengthened in the midst of trial.