Anticipation

Anyone currently waiting for anything important (a proposal, to adopt, to conceive, on approval for a house or The Job or graduate school...) will likely tell you that it is not a pleasant experience.  I've been there, especially in the area of adoption, which has comprehended years of my life in total, but strangely of late I've found myself reading the blogs and stories of others on the same journey, whether currently in the wait or in retrospective reminiscence thereof.  Why would I want to relive what some might call a sort of mental torture?  I just reread 'Pride and Prejudice' and was reminded of my teenage angst as I watched the 5 hour miniseries (Colin Firth!), wondering how any of the characters could endure so long in the miasmic stew of not knowing, save that all their future prospects were certainly blasted into nothingness.  Why am I now, in looking back, a little wistful that the waiting is over?

It taught me patience in a world of instant fulfillment.

It taught me trust in a society full of disappointment.

There was something to anticipate, something to look forward to, no matter the frustrations of the moment, there was a joy to come that must make it worthwhile.

It taught me that I could live and even flourish without the hoped for blessing, I could go on living even if the hope was never realized.

And strangely, in the moment that joy was realized, it seemed rather anticlimactic, like Christmas after the last present was opened: months of waiting and hoping for this?

So did the ancients hope for their Messiah, their coming King who would save Israel from its political and cultural enemies.  For thousands of years they waited, and many observant Jews wait still.  But during this season of Advent, though some people count down to Christmas with dog treats or bottles of wine, we remember that waiting, that ancient longing, fulfilled in a way no one anticipated, that none expected, that many could not or would not accept.  Something so anticlimactic it is still considered the greatest scandal of all time: something to be mocked, laughed at, ridiculed.  And it is a reminder that we wait still, for a second Christmas as it were, one that will not leave anyone disappointed or dismayed or wondering if 'this is it?'  Perhaps that is why I get a little nostalgic during this particular season for things that seemed quite painful and interminable at the time.  I've that same longing, we all do, and it isn't for an adoption to go through or graduation day to come, save that greatest of all Adoptions and Graduations.

Were I to do it differently, I'd try to enjoy the wait more, to focus more on the anticipation and less on my current lack.  To wait with more excitement and patience, if those two are compatible, as I believe they are.  To not look down on the present in the light of what might be.  Mayhap I could even glean a little wisdom in that greatest of all waits, for which creation itself verily holds its breath.