The Waiting Rock

I am a child.  It is one of my first memories.  I sit on a rock, the one I have named, the waiting rock.

Out in the country at my grandparents home, I am four waiting for my parents to pick me up after a visit.  It is fuzzy, but clear.  It is vague, but sharp.  It is a place I return to when I go back as far as I can. I am calm, expectant, a waiting child, knowing on this rock that my father will come.

A child like name, a simple place. A rock.

I am  on this massive stone which serves as a holding station for my expectant heart.  And I am collecting acorns which I will sell to my father when he arrives to pick me up.

I have busied my heart and my hands.  And dreamed up in my four year old mind, this acorn-selling venture.

A little distraction to ease the wait.

And now past the mid-century mark in years I struggle with waiting.  Sitting in a place of uncertainty, waiting for understanding.  Murky confusion settles in like dense fog on the mountain side where yellow blinking caution lights signal be alert.

I have been here many times before. It is familiar in its pain.  In my spirit I feel I should have earned knowledge, this waiting shouldn’t seem so challenging. I studied  like a student, text book in hand.  My teacher is Unknowing.  My lessons are tough but served in love.  Wait and see.  Be still and know.  Rest in confidence.  I should be further along when the waiting comes and lays heavy, rolls all cement mixer over my Hope and my dreamy childish plans.

I start over and over in a numbing place of pain, needing to re-learn and remediate the lesson, a big one to trust what will come.  To know it will be good.  To rest in the long corridors where the painful echo reverberates…..wait, child.  Wait. And wait some more.

These seasons marked with uncertainty about time-frames, periods of wonder  and questionning bear down hard on the heart.  This is a familiar place.  A seemingly endless black tunnel of dark wait during times of infertility when my lesson plan was Trust.  I learned. I saw the wait produces good. Shaping and molding and softening happen in these periods of unknowing.  A yellow light, not go green or stop red, but yellow signals me to calm down and behold the uncertainy.

The rock is not the waiting rock of my childhood.  It is not benign, offering a soft seat for a child.  The rock is hard and it hurts.  The waiting rock of today is a seat of confusion.

And the child, the one of God must lean on the Rock.  Must cry out to the Rock under which there is protection in the funnel cloud storm of wait.  The touchdown destructive storm of uncertainty that the flesh feels fiercy in the turmoil.  The rock of today is the Rock of Ages.

It is the one so sturdy and strong that nothing can tear it down and under which everyone can find protection.

But the heart and the hands look for acorns to gather. And a loving father to bend down and buy the trinkets that the child lays out in a row to offer.

He does this.  He offers to gather up the crumbs. He is willing  and even longing to wipe the tear. He seeks to  gather up the child in love and bring her to Himself. He gathers up the hurting waiting. He casts a shadow of protection and Security in the hurricane force winds of hurt.

Shelters in His embrace.  Extends a rock of certainty, his  very Love .Offers Hope even now, even here in unknowing.

His Love in the waiting is all that is needed. The weak, the meek and the broken find shelter in the storm of the wait.

And can stay hidden in His love until it passes, when it passes and after it passes.

The lessons of waiting.  They are hard.  I am weak.  But he is strong.

I am a child. Sitting on His lap. He is my waiting rock.  He is The Waiting Rock.

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