Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
This is a guest post by EHoP community member Dianne Schlichting, in response to “Waiting and Expectation” by Christine Luna Munger.
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Having carried and birthed four children, waiting and expectation are opposites that I know I have experienced. So, too, the wedding vows spoken 50+ years ago: engagement and marriage are times of waiting and expectation. Might we not also name the many natural evolutions of time in our lives. For example, wanting to be sixteen in order to drive with the expectation that a car is just around the corner, or just turning five-years-old and anticipating entering school for the very first time. Oh, and we must not forget Christmas: weeks of waiting and expectation occur; these days anticipate our wildest imaginings. Yes, we do wait and we do have expectations. Holding these in balance is the work of prayer.
I am so often reminded of St. Ignatius’s First Principle and Foundation, an invitation by St. Ignatius to allow God to be the center of one’s life and to avoid placing anything else in that place. Ignatius states that we should not prefer one state of being over another—sickness/health; riches/poverty; success/failure, a long life or a short one. Each state of being has the potential (grace) of calling us into deeper relationship with the Divine.
So when I am sick, I am encouraged to be in that moment, even as I await the return of better health. My expectation is that God is with me every moment of my life, holding me through the thick and thin of living.
Waiting for a flower to blossom can seem like an eternity; however, when it does what it does best (flower open), the waiting and the expectation are simultaneously rewarded. What joy!
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Dianne Schlichting
Dianne is a member of EHoP; she and her husband John value the opportunity to share contemplative prayer and outreach with others who make the House of Prayer their spiritual home. Dianne is a wife, mother, and grandmother who loves spending time in nature, especially canoeing with John.
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