A Different Kind of Waiting

So, here I am. Waiting. Again. But this one is different. Last time, pre-surgery (boy oh boy, was that just a few days ago) I wanted it to come and go, get it over with, be done, tick it off my list. This time (and I know others don’t feel this same way), instead of wanting to get it over with, I am experiencing it like a kind of resting, in between, waiting place. The sort of thing that William Bridges speaks to in his book Transitions, the adjustment, the getting ok with not knowing yet. Part of what is interesting in this place is that there is both easy and hard in it.

On the easy side, right now, today, I can pretend the results are whatever I want them to be. I can live in denial and let life be totally ok, even fun. Hanging out with my family, doing my thing, having a week off work, and recovering. Like it is a normal day in the life.

On the harder side of things – there are the long, lonely moments that even a room full of my dearest friends couldn’t silence. There is an eerie quiet to it. Where the waiting echoes and sort of melts into the past and the future. When I am sitting here, in this place, it feels like there is a hollowness in people’s words. Emptiness in their eyes. It catches my breath. My heart beats harder. The muscles in my head and neck tighten. There is an ache in my fingertips, a yearning, to touch something, someone, to make it slow down, to make time stand still. To dodge the bullet of receiving The News.

It is a special kind of waiting. The black and white –ness of the news, of the results are so unlike what is found in the natural world. There is a pronouncement. I am healthy or I am not healthy. Bullshit. I am Signy. And there is so much more to whether I am healthy or not than a little 4 mm piece of flesh. There is whether my heart is healthy (flexible and full of love and dreams), and my thoughts (generous, open, curious), and whether I am in right relationship with my maker. There is the question of whether my community is healthy, and my family, and how I contribute to that. All of these bigger places to evaluate my health. But so hard to keep the focus there, when this other nightmare of waiting pulls me out of my bed, to restlessly pace the halls of my home and my mind at all hours.

Sure, I want this to be over. But what if I don’t like the news? What if it is not what I want to hear? Then I will look back on this week as vacation. A nice little respite. Why didn’t I enjoy it more, those last few days and hours of peacefully, mercifully, not knowing what lay ahead. So, for now, I will enjoy myself. And reflect on the greater health that I have, and consider places I need more balance, and more health.

So, if you are willing, please keep this vigil with me too, and look into your own life… what parts of it are healthy, what parts are not, and what are the next steps to making all of it work better?