The Long Wait (Emeli Sande)

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.                -Isaiah 43:1-2

 

 
When I was a kid, the most difficult waiting of this season had to do with the rule that we could only advance the mouse on our advent calendar one day at a time toward Christmas.  Some days my brother and I would move the mouse several times, back and forth, between the previous and current days; with the kind of twitchy frustration that causes children to groan or sigh and flail themselves onto the nearest couch or chair.  WHY GOD, did you make advent so long?!

As an adult, I confess, I am not much better with waiting.  But I do recognize that beyond the realm of advent calendars and four Sundays set aside for themes of “waiting and expectation,” there is another kind of wait. There are those among us that have been waiting life times, literally; those who have said the need and said it again and screamed the need and still are waiting for an answer. I think of family members who waited their whole lives before trying to reconcile, of the countless people who work and wait generation to generation to bring peace to homelands rife with conflict, and of all the waiting in between: months of unemployment, years of trying to let go of hurt.

Some times, we wait so long that the waiting itself becomes a force in our lives. Our situation doesn’t seem to change, that loved one doesn’t change, that problem does not get resolved; instead, in the face of all this waiting, all of the sameness around us, we change. Waiting can empty us. Waiting can develop in us capacities and characteristics we had not recognized in ourselves, both good and bad (perseverance, wisdom, bitterness, cynicism…).  

 

 

Oh heaven, oh heaven
I wake with good intentions
But the day it always lasts too long
Then I'm gone
Then I'm gone
Then I'm gone

 

This is what I hear when Sande sings “will you recognize me?” It has been so long that my expectation, my good intention, has been lost; so long, in fact, that I feel as though I have been lost. “The day always lasts too long, then I’m gone.”  The kind of emptying that long waiting can bring to us can be painful, it can be exhausting; but it can also be constructive, clearing away parts of us that may have held us back at one time, making space for good risk taking, emptying us for something new. Then again (and just to be clear) sometimes the emptying-wait just sucks.

But the Good News of this Advent season is that God waits with us. In the long history of our faith, both before the birth of Emmanuel and after, God was with the people, as they waited, as their days and years grew long, when they didn’t remember who they were and when they didn’t live into that identity. God was with them. God is with us. So the answer to our song’s question is a divine “yes.” Yes, I will recognize you, empty or full, whatever the waiting brings to you, however it changes you. I will recognize you, for you are mine.

 

In your emptying and in your filling, may God With Us, keep you through the wait.

-Lindsey