Waiting...Part 1

That fragile place between hope and disappointment, faith and despair...maybe its called Waiting.

Many of us find ourselves in this place in our lives. Where the things we hope for, dream of, want to be and do, just aren't----yet. Just like the dashes I placed before the word "yet", we often can find ourselves hitting what I call an "in-between place." Waiting. You feel closer than ever to what should be, you're in the growing moments towards certain climaxes in your life or you have a promise or desire for things to be different, and depending on the day, you feel as close to it or as far from it as your can possibly imagine. The in-between places.

As I have watched movies over the past few months, a reoccurring thought, which turned into a question, which has morphed into revelation as I've watched. I began to notice myself getting to the end of a movie, looking at the story that it told, and feeling something missing, something lacking. I wanted to know what the characters felt when the scene ended, when they had to live with themselves after they made that decision, when they had those things going on with their family etc....?? What is the the rest of the story?

As much as they can tell us stories, inspire us, teach us things about life, and entertain us, movies don't show us the whole story. Think about it. Movies play out scene by scene, telling their stories, working with all the good elements of story: climax, conflict, character development etc., but they can only show a scene at a time. Take a movie about a love story for instance: there will be a scene where the lovers meet, a scene where they talk for the first time, a scene where they encounter some conflict in their story, a scene where they work to overcome conflict, and eventually a scene where they overcome the conflict, and we hope, finally kiss (that is if you a romantic person like myself).

But have you ever stopped to think about what happens immediately after the scene cuts?? There they are, the lovers, in the process of falling in love, but you only see the peak moments, the moments where lots happens to develop the story, because that is all that a movie really has time to show you in a 1 and 1/2 hour slot of time. What occurs in those places between scenes? When do those people really get to know each other? When do they talk about their families, their fears, their dreams, their small flaws? All these things are what really make a relationship work, what falling in love really means--getting to know each other. They happen in the in and out, everyday, all day, living together, in a process of time and intentionality, a learning to love. You don't see all those moments in movies. The in-between moments.

What I feel like this has done to the way we see our lives is that we have failed to value the moments of our lives that seem less glamorous, much slower, and not as outwardly significant. (Lets be honest, we want stories that look like those on the screen, but they only show us a fraction of what our stories really consist of). Our stories have a lot of in-between places. And it's often in these places we are the most susceptible to want to throw in the towel, speed up the process, or take charge of writing our own stories. We don't like the waiting. (Another thing our instant gratification culture has engraved in us, but I don't want to go into that too much right now).

But it is in the waiting, in that special place, that you are being formed, shaped, and created.
In the waiting, you are BECOMING what hope has promised you.