Waiting To Be Changed
by Ron Hughes
If you ask most people to describe their first memory, you’ll likely hear about something that happened after their third birthday. We understand the circumstances of our infancy by listening to stories told by our parents and older siblings, by observing parents of new babies, and by our own emotional responses to tiny babies. All of this is highly subjective, so it’s doubtful that any of us have an entirely accurate concept of the first couple of years of our life.
One thing is sure: the first lesson of life is learning to wait. Even attentive parents fail to anticipate their new infant’s every need, so babies learn to wait to be fed, to be changed, to be cuddled and comforted. While we have no memory of this, the lesson stays with us. Our early experience with waiting shapes how we feel about waiting as grown-ups.
Factors such as the length of time we lay stinking and uncomfortable waiting to be changed and the way in which our wait was resolved (were we held close to our mother’s breast and lovingly caressed while we nursed, or did we have a stiff rubber nipple thrust between our gums) have to affect how we respond to the process of waiting throughout life.
In my family, going to school was a big deal. So about the time I didn’t need to wait to be changed, I had to wait to go to learn. I had to wait for my brain to develop, for my motor skills to become more refined and for the birthday which marked the arbitrary age which allowed me to go to school - the symbol of serious learning.
I hadn’t finished first grade when I began to experience the long wait for love. I want to interject here that I grew up in a loving family. Only on rare occasions did I ever doubt the love of my parents, typically when they drew the line at some inappropriate or unsafe indulgence. I knew the love of family members, parents, big sisters and even some kind of aloof affection from my older brother who would do things like let me pull the trigger on his “22."
The wait for love that I’m talking about involved a sense of connectedness with someone outside of my family circle. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the boys my age. I liked girls better. They weren’t so rough and uncouth. They looked better and smelled nicer. So I would be their hero and give up playing soccer with the boys to turn rope for them. I’d sacrifice the male shenanigans at the back of the bus to sit with them. And somewhere in all of this, the stirring of Eros began to make things interesting.
In my time and place, I had to learn to wait for the kind of love I longed to have. I distracted myself from this (and attempted to enhance my opportunities) by waiting for something else. I wasn’t far into my adolescence when I found myself waiting to drive. I had lots of experience with tractors and an old yellow pickup on the farm. But I wanted to get onto the road to have access to the car. To have the independence that wheels could provide.
Shortly after I got my licence, I learned that this was only a first step. My desire for independence through driving was representative of my growing desire to individuate entirely. I wanted to be my own person. I was through with being Sid and Leona’s boy. I wanted to make my own way in the world. The fairy tales of my childhood were heavily populated with young men who exemplified my yearnings. I didn’t need a handsome black stallion with a princess behind my saddle riding off into the sunset. A 10-year-old car with girl from the church youth group would have been enough. But even that turned out to be undoable and I found myself waiting again, or should I say “still.”
I don’t want you to think I was a complete failure. I eventually got the car and went off to the big city to seek my fortune. I pursued formal education, though I think I learned more out of the classroom than in it. Just as I achieved separation from my family, the old wait for love reared its head again. But this was different. By now I was looking for connection - deep, soul-sharing intimacy. You know? There just weren’t that many girls looking for the same thing, at least not with me. So I began the long wait to connect.
As I approached the end of my formal schooling, I began waiting to get that behind me so I could get a job. Waiting to earn, to spend, to accumulate, was all part of the waiting to connect. I had the idea that maybe I could connect with someone who was impressed with my accumulations. At least, that could be a first step. Later she, too, would want deep, soul-sharing intimacy. It didn’t help.
As the months marched by (remember I was a young man and hadn’t really adopted years as my primary unit of measure), I found more and more fulfillment in my long list of waits. I accepted a great job at a radio station in the big city, lived on my own, bought stuff I wanted, and eventually attracted a girl who appreciated my cooking and musical ability.
But even all this wasn’t enough. Now thirty-odd years down the road, I’m still waiting. I’ve found that in some ways, I’m still waiting for a lot of the same stuff I’ve waited for all my life. It seems like I’ve worked my way back and forth through my list several times. Moments of fulfillment (or seeming fulfillment) have been replaced by new goals which required more waiting.
If I had to choose one word for what I’m waiting for now, it would be “transcendence.” A little more intimacy (a deeper sharing of souls), independence (you lose your independence to the things which were its symbols - the house, car, job, family and so on), knowledge (the more I learned, the more I found out I have yet to learn), and love (you can never get enough of this), would be nice along the way, but they’re not enough.
I’m still waiting. Waiting to get above and beyond all of this. I’ve concluded that, at another level entirely, I’m back to waiting to be changed. Paul wrote about this, and I’ve known his words for most of my life. He wrote: “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53 ESV)
When I was younger, I used to think that this was all about a change in my physical body which would allow me to do cool things like walk through walls and move about at speed of thought. This conception may or may not be true, but what matters now is that my new body will be able to withstand being in the presence of God in a way I can’t imagine now.
What’s so special about that? It means that all my waiting will be over. At least, I think my waiting will be over. Even if there is some kind of ongoing process through eternity, the waiting then will be free of the inner tension that accompanies so much of my waiting here. In the meantime, knowing what I’m really waiting for reduces a lot of that inner tension. Impatience only interferes with the sanctifying benefits of waiting.
If only we could know from the beginning that we’d spend our whole life waiting to be changed!
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Reply #1 on : Wed January 21, 2009, 09:54:13