Language of Love: Waiting

A popular book by Gary Chapman identifies five languages of love: gifts, acts of service, presence, touch and words. The "languages of love" are, in my view, infinitely more diverse, profound, fascinating, mysterious and serendipitous than these basic, simple five. Off the top of my head:  waiting, surrender or release, praying with and for, giving and asking for forgiveness, feeding, laughing and joking together, bearing with patiently, confronting/combating and "ad infinitum." Here I consider "waiting" as a language of love.

Frequently we find ourselves waiting for our beloved. This involves, obviously, some separation: physical-geographical or emotional-spiritual. About two weeks after my first date with my first girl friend I was madly in loved and asked her to marry me. She told me "no, not yet." She was 19 years old, a sophomore in college. So I started my waiting. Notice the two dimensions:  "no" and "not yet." The "no" was a no. But the "not yet" was a "maybe later"...a tentative yes, a grounds for hope. So we see that waiting is structured by hope: the beloved and the desired is not in my possession, it is absent, there is deprivation; but by anticipation she is already possessed by me in my heart, with a premonition of delight and satisfaction. Mysteriously, deprivation and absence combine with anticipation and joy. And so, 1969 -70 I lived and worked in NYC but called her faithfully every Wednesday night; saw her every Saturday and looked forward to both all week. The waiting through this courtship was entirely joyous as I got consistent signals that my love was reciprocated and I enjoyed high certitude that my desire would be consummated.

Throughout my childhood, Christmas afternoons were at my grandmother's house: we had cold cuts, rye bread, potato salad; received pajamas as presents; and crammed into a small old farm house with many cousins, Grandma, Aunt Grace and four of the five Laracy brothers. Uncle Jack almost never came. He was different from his brothers. Hard to describe: he had fought with Patton and I always wondered if he was emotionally wounded from the combat. Quiet, shy, sweet in temperament, he married an agoraphobe so we never saw him or his two sons. I knew him because when I caddied as a teenager, he would still "make a loop" on the weekend to supplement his job wage. Most of the adult caddies were called "rummies"...alcoholics who lived in low-end boarding homes....easy to take characters, sometimes interesting, but somewhat sad. Uncle Jack was a cut or two above that. He always smoked a huge stogie. He walked with his feet pointing out so was nicknamed "duck." As his nephew, I was christened "little duck" which I received happily because it seemed to come with affection and muted respect. Anyway, every hour Christmas afternoon when the bus stopped across the street from my Grandma's house on Eagle Rock Avenue, West Orange, NJ, she would look out the window and loudly ask: "Is that Jack?"  All afternoon she watched and waited for Jack. He pretty much never came. She never stopped waiting. She loved her five sons but she had something special for Jack. Her love came forth as waiting...every Christmas!

When you think of it, time is almost always structured by waiting and hope: waiting for the bus, graduation, our wedding day, the birth of our child, vacation, and so forth. The human heart is everlastingly desiring, and than waiting with hope. The degree of certainty elevates the joyousness of the waiting. All the Children I have known have unbounded confidence in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny and wait bi-annually with sublime happiness. But it is also true that no consummated hope ever resolves the longing of the human heart: we achieve one goal, but move almost immediately into another pattern of waiting. Clearly the human heart is created with an infinite, unbounded longing...for communion with the Good and the True and the Beautiful to an infinite degree and for eternity. Nothing finite or temporal satisfies us: no person, thing, achievement or earthly condition. None! And so, we move from one hope to another; from one waiting to another. The ultimate question, of course, is: are we destined to satisfy this desire that is so profound, passionate, persistent, and irrepressible? For sure, however, life and time and being are:  waiting, longing, hoping.

The story of the Prodigal Son has the the naughty son squandering his inheritance, falling into decadence, and returning home in desperation. It is the loving Father who is waiting. He is waiting for his beloved son. He looks every day down the road, like my Grandmother on Christmas afternoon, hoping and yearning to see his precious little one. After a prolonged wait, he sees him; he rushes to him with arms open; robes him with splendor, puts a ring on him and prepares a feast. He cares not what has transpired or even what the son's attitude is; he just loves him and welcomes him. This story reveals the meaning of time: the loving Father is waiting for us. Patiently. With most passionate, profound, persistent and irrepressible longing. He is waiting for us. We also, to a large degree unconsciously, are waiting and hoping for Him.

The certainty that we are awaited can infuse our own waiting with serenity, vigor, energy, delight...as we nourish all our hopes and our final, ultimate Hope.