I am Happy To Wait

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,

And in His word I do hope.

My soul waits for the Lord

More than those who watch for the morning –

Yes, more than those who watch for the morning” (Psalm 130:5,6, NKJV).

Mother had a singular knack for baking. Without fail, her cheese biscuits, cherry muffins and pound cakes found equal favor on my taste buds. Picking a favorite was useless. Recollection is an unworthy measure, but I recollect she never prepared any baked goods I did not like. My childhood was marked as much by aroma and its reward as report cards, golf scores and the predictable, always awkward, failed attempts to impress a girl, the best way I know to feel sorry for oneself. I got used to it.

Mom always espoused wisdom through expression. The sun never set before she would spill into conversation a “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”  Mom knew what she knew and was only inclined to share it after I stopped smoking it and needed guidance and consolation. Mom’s bread was wisdom enough.

If a kitchen is the heart of a home, our heart produced certain aromas, some making me forget my latest “Charlie Brown” moment. The memory of Mom’s bread educes a certain soothing, salivating and satisfying trigger into those early days. Walking into our house, my attention immediately turned toward the magic coming from the oven. The right blend of flour, sugar, butter, salt and yeast evaded me, but I understood when my wait was over, nothing in the world mattered except melting butter on that warm bread and savoring her creation. The taste paused time.

Somewhere, sometime, beneath my attention, childhood reality ended, and Mom quit baking. My memory and dreams became wishes. I longed for that bread, but even if I attempted the recipe, I lacked the touch. You either have it or you don’t.

If I learned one thing from Mom’s baking, I learned to wait. Orphaned by my distractions, perceiving and misperceiving time, I learned to put it in my “pipe” until morning came, and morning did not always come on my next sunrise. I discovered a morning possesses its own schedule and creates its own distance.

Like Mom’s bread, morning’s gift pauses time before the day begins, giving me rest and respite, intersecting my listening soul with a silence forming my past, my future and my reflections. Those early hours clarify my pain while allowing me to forget and dream my “could have beens” in simultaneous wonder. Its cleansing illumination assures me the sum of my amassed decisions reach their end during the final exhaustion of my failed and triumphal intentions.

If the verse is true that there is a reason, a purpose for everything under heaven, I am happy to wait until morning comes, and more, until God has prepared my soul for that final morning.

“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15).