Making Progress By Doing Nothing...Except Thinking

   And the waiting continues.  It's a strange thing to be a busy person and then put everything on hold while one sits and waits.  Sure, there are things to do: lesson plans, laundry, drink more, eat more, text, and oh...the Waltons are on Channel 391 at 3:00.  My school community is on hold today too because of the freezing rain.  Many young moms are decrying this fact, but it is what it is.  But my waiting comes with milestones besides the "to do" list.  Forty-eight hours from now Round Three of chemotherapy will enter my veins.  While I have a total of six of these treatments, one should be excited to hit the halfway mark, and I am to some degree.  But each one comes with a cost of nausea, exhaustion, no appetite, and then, of course, more waiting.
   In my imagination I sometimes go back in history.  I ask my students to do the same thing when encountering historical characters in our studies at school.  I want them to imagine how their lives would be different and yet these people of the past also had families and therefore they most likely experienced love, pain, laughter, apprehension about the future, hope, money concerns, faith, hunger, and grief.  Each life on earth that has ever lived goes through these feelings and experiences.  Right now I am pondering those early explorers that sailed the Atlantic Ocean looking for a new land.  It's out there somewhere, but the waiting with its storms and uncertainties and endless waves must have felt overwhelming from time to time.  Even the beauty of sunrises and sunsets may have been of little comfort in the face of that kind of uncertainty other than the knowledge that they were generally still  going in the right direction.  For me I can sometimes wallow in similar feelings.  "Will I ever get there?" "Will I enjoy health and well-being ever again?" "Will I ever have the energy to do the things I used to do?"  Sure, one can ponder such things, but really the waiting must be waited out. But I also can wait it out with a sense of faith.  I have a faith that this journey is covered by God's supervision, that his Word is still true, that his claim of love for me is untarnished, that his promises are true.
   The waiting?  I can and will wait it out.  It will be worth it when we ultimately land in the New World.  "But those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.  They will mount up on wings like eagles..." (Isaiah 40).  Now is the time to wait.  For now, progress is measured in the waiting.  I can do that.