The Wonder of Waiting

Lately, the Bower family has been waiting...a lot. Waiting for the ground to warm up and for this Northern Michigan weather to get past its nasty freezes so we can plant the rest of the garden. Waiting, along with our daughter (child#3) for the arrival of our fifth grandchild. Waiting nervously as our teenage daughter (child #6) drives across five states to come home after a five month absence. Waiting for a shipment of our new book to arrive...a month later than we had hoped.

Waiting is no fun.

If waiting isn't worrying me, it's busy trying to lull me into a sort of mental/spiritual sleepiness. With my senses numb and my mind dumb, I don't always perceive what good things are actually brewing beneath the surface....what surprises are looming....what beautiful things are about to emerge. That's why when the leaves finally did appear on our trees (May 14?!) I hardly noticed. Suddenly, they were just there. Same with our granddaughter, Lucy. Once we stopped watching the "pot" on #3 it finally boiled.

No, waiting isn't fun, but it is often very good. It gave little Lucy's lungs more time to develop. It gave our teenager more highway experience. And it gave me a chance to find two typos in our new book that we had missed in our proofreading stage.

I hate to wait...but I usually love the results.

By the way, Lucy arrived May 19 (8 lbs. 4 oz.), and #6 made it home safely, better educated about how to use my GPS. And our new book? Well, The Jingle In My Pocket will be available June 9. If you've already been on the waiting list, well, sorry for the delay, but it's well worth the wait.

And the waiting game continues for my family: for #5's wedding day in August, for the first child of #1 and his wife in October, for school to be over for #s 7 through 11, and for #12 to get me in a tent in the backyard for that story night I promised him we'd have once it gets warm.

I can't wait.