A Daughter's Love : waiting...

Seasons of waiting can be so difficult because they are usually accompanied by uncertainty and helplessness. I've always hated waiting, maybe out of impatience, but I think more so because I can't stand passivity! And, I have an overachieving nature, so I just want to do something, anything to change things, to make things better. (Even though there's always the possibility that my involvement could make things worse!)

Anyways, there were many difficult times of waiting throughout our journey. Back in the fall of 2001...waiting for a diagnosis was terrifying and excrutiating. I was fully aware of both the oddity and anguish of my conviction that almost anything other than ALS would be a relief. And then there were the 12 years following...praying countless times a day for healing and waiting for our miracle to come.

A particularly difficult season of waiting was in the spring of 2009 when my dad was in ICU for respiratory difficulties, awaiting and then recovering from surgery. I felt helpless to change the situation, to stop my father's suffering, to ease his fear, and to bring him out of the hospital, which was a setting he loathed, and back to home, where he had considerably more control over his environment. As anyone who has spent any time at the hospital knows too well, minutes feel like hours, and there's the constant bewildering sense that you're existing in a different realm as life outside seems to somehow carry on without you.

The song "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller was a source of strength and hope to me particularly during this time but also during other seasons of waiting. It transformed the way I viewed waiting by challenging my assumption that it had to be passive. It is a song that encouraged me when my strength was nearly diminished because it reminded me of the bottomless well of strength I could draw upon. Perhaps in your times of waiting which can, simply put, be torture, this song (and others) may give you some strength.

"While I'm Waiting" by John Waller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-M7oGrOa2I

http://www.metrolyrics.com/while-im-waiting-lyrics-john-waller.html