Letter
from Harrisburg
A
little faith eases weight of waiting
By Dorcas Smucker
For The Register-Guard
DEC 11, 2016
We are all waiting for something,” my friend Trish said in the women’s class at church last Sunday.
As Mennonites, we
celebrate Christmas with lots of food, music and
Scripture, but we don’t observe the Advent calendar as a
church tradition.
Trish became intrigued
with the custom and decided to teach about it in Sunday
school.
Week 1 is about faith
and waiting, she told us. Faith keeps you believing with
an expectant hope, even through years of silence.
Week 2 is about
preparation. We should be actively getting ready for
whatever it is we hope for, even if there’s no sign of it
yet.
The next weeks focus on
joy, love and finally Christ, the promised child arriving
after hundreds of years of waiting.
I looked around the
circle of women. Trish was right. We were all waiting for
something — a diagnosis, word from a loved one, adult
children to find their way, a husband to return, babies to
sleep through the night, healing in body and soul,
financial strains to ease, private hopes to finally be
fulfilled and silent suffering to end.
With most of our
heartaches, no ending date is given. I’m never sure if not
knowing the duration is the worst, or if it’s harder to
know you have four more months of vomiting with this
pregnancy, three more years of constant slogging until
graduation, 10 more years of working with impossible
people until retirement.
Eventually, when we
think this situation is never going to end, the page
finally turns, the light comes on, the dark splinter is
pulled and the festering wound can heal at last.
Like most of us, I
spent the past year waiting for a list of deep and
unspoken matters to resolve, and for smaller and more
public things as well — such as a building permit.
It should not have been
this complicated. For years, I’ve wanted a cozy and
private place to write. Then, suddenly, the components
were all there: my husband wasn’t quite as busy; we own a
bit of property across the road, along the creek; we had a
70-year-old shed torn down; and its lovely weathered
boards were perfect for building a little cabin.
I explained what I
wanted and Paul drew up a design. I was thrilled — a vague
dream coming to life.
We hadn’t counted on
the county’s objections. A request for a simple permit
turned into a long and seemingly endless series of
requirements, requests, regulations and restrictions.
Paul insisted they were
only doing what county land-use offices do, but I was
convinced some vindictive person had made it his mission
to deny me my dream.
The waiting went on and
on. We submitted forms and contacted engineers and paid
fees. On walks down Powerline Road, I would stop and look
at the building site among the trees and hawthorn bushes,
wondering how long I had to wait and whether this was a
dream that would slowly die.
“If I had my cabin, I
would do this there,” I thought every time I tried to find
a secluded place to write or planned to meet someone for a
quiet conversation.
But, like the Advent
tradition teaches, I kept making preparations in spite of
the unclear timeline, the lack of any evidence that the
hoped-for would come to pass. I gathered a small antique
table from a benefit auction, a file of ideas,
vintage-looking fabric to cover an office chair, and the
little display shelf my grandpa made for me, some 50 years
ago.
Enduring with grace was
the only part of the process within my control.
Then, one day in late
fall, Paul came home with a bright yellow paper giving us
permission to continue, and that time of waiting was over.
The process was made
easier, I realize, by a faith made stronger by tough
things in the past.
Nine years ago, our
teenage daughter was sick with a vague, debilitating and
chronic illness. Every day we hoped for improvement,
prayed for it, longed for it. Every day she would come
downstairs, curl her thin body into a chair next to me,
and beg me to assure her that she was going to get better.
I don’t remember what I
told her, but I recall the huge and frightening unknown
before me like an opaque fog that we were forced to walk
into, morning after morning, a place where we were
forgotten and time stretched endlessly.
At the same time, we
had friends and family who stayed with us, assuring us of
God’s presence by their own, so we knew we had not been abandoned.
The daughter got
better. It was a long and bizarre journey, but today she
is a senior at Oregon State University, paying for it
herself, and doing well.
I’m still amazed that
the waiting actually ended. Our gratitude was and is
enormous. I see glimpses of purpose and redemption now in
her determination and her compassionate heart. She became
someone who finds a way through and who will never say the
wrong words to a sick person.
When the time is right,
a door opens and light comes in.
My niece Annette knows
all about waiting. She and Jay married in 2005 and then,
instead of easily growing a few babies like all of their
friends, they faced infertility, disappointment and failed
adoptions for years.
I recall the sense of
desolation, the grief, the anger that women who didn’t
want babies were having them, and this stable couple who
would make wonderful parents couldn’t conceive.
Then, without prelude,
the endless fog lifted, a child was available for
adoption, and they had a son, their long grief and
emptiness flipped over to an enormous completeness and
joy.
Less than two years
later, in the most astonishing of blessings, Annette was
pregnant with a daughter they named Liberty.
And incomprehensibly,
another pregnancy followed, soon after, just when they
were going through an especially stressful time. Annette
says, “God gave me a word one day for her. ‘She is a
symbol of light in a dark time of your life’ followed by
Isaiah 60:1—‘Arise, shine, for your light has come.’ The
stress didn’t go away but we felt peace. ‘Ayla’ means
shining light. Her middle name is Hope, and she is our
little shining light of hope.”
We saw them all in
Minnesota recently, having gathered to celebrate my dad’s
100th birthday. Justice ran around pretending to be a
fire-breathing dragon. Liberty played in a dress I had
made for her, and little Ayla sat on her grandma’s lap and
giggled.
Children are always
precious, but I think we see the value of these three more
fully for having waited for them so long.
This, then, is my
Advent resolve — to embrace the waiting, to keep faith in
the silence, to be kind to those suspended by
circumstances and to prepare with expectant hope for the
gifts that are certain to come.
Thanks for this post! It brought on tears.
ReplyDeleteChallenged to "Embrace the waiting" and "Keep faith in the silence". May Jesus help me day by day to do this!
Yes!!! I needed this!
ReplyDeleteThank you for touching my heart this morning! Beautiful, challenging truth!
ReplyDeleteDorcas, I nose around here a lot and always enjoy your writings, but I really love these insights into your faith -- they're so very edifying!
ReplyDeleteI am waiting, for a baby. The baby will be 2 next month, and we have been trying to get him into our home for a year! He is my husband's great nephew, and is in the custody of another state. This state does not allow its "children" to leave the state. Last month he became available for adoption, but still they wont allow us to adopt him because "they don't allow their children to leave the state". But we feel called to this child. We feel he will be with us one day. So I am trying to step out in faith, make plans where there seem to be none. Expecting the miracle we feel God is planning for us. We are 53, my husband is retired. We are raising a grandchild already. But still hoping and praying for this baby boy. The baby also has 2 sisters and a brother. But they are with family members. None of the family took this baby because he is bi-racial. So many details in this story are sad. But we are continuing to Hope and pray into the new year! Thank you for this article!
ReplyDeleteLast week just before your column was published I led a Bible Study for Lutheran Women on just this topic. Wish I could have shared it as well as you did. I hope you and your family have a very Merry Christmas.
ReplyDeleteDorcas, this is beautifully written. When I grow up, I'm gonna write like you do.:) Thanks for these words. Christmas is always such a poignant time of renewing hope even in the dark times.
ReplyDelete