“What are you waiting for?”
I thought I would write about waiting for peace in the world. Waiting for hope. Waiting for the Lord, like in the Psalm verse below, or the Taize chant I’ve been humming all morning.
Instead, in my writing today, the question dredged up a particular memory from childhood. I am at the pool down the road from our house—the scene of many summer memories. Most of those include handstands and pool games with my sisters and friends, swim team practices or meets where I sometimes finish in second place, and grilled cheese from the snack bar. Happy memories, all from one side of the pool—the shallow-to-medium end.
The other side—the deep end—is where the question “What are you waiting for?” is shouted at me from below.
I’m standing at the edge of the high dive, near-sighted and afraid. Afraid to jump. Afraid not to jump. Just afraid. I’m 9 or 10. Old enough to know that, in the calculus of elementary school swimmers, I should be ashamed of being afraid. Also old enough to know that being afraid of jumping into a blurry body of water, where the teenage lifeguards aren’t always paying attention, is actually smart.
“What are you waiting for? Just jump!”
To jump into the unknown, we don’t need taunts from those who have a different calculus of risk and reward. We need encouragement to leap when the time is right. We need the voices of those who tell us we can do it, and they will be with us as we try.
Whatever you are waiting for, be strong. Have courage. Take your time. Take a deep breath. If it calls for jumping, jump when you are ready. If it calls for more waiting, find a comfortable spot to rest. Whichever it is, you are not alone.
a writing prompt
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!
~Psalm 27:14
Write about what you are waiting for.
a good thing
I stopped waiting until I felt it was perfect before I submitted a piece of writing, and a good thing happened.
Here’s my interview with Women on Writing, with a link to my runner-up piece “Lucy’s Lips” in their creative non-fiction contest.
a short film about a high dive
If you resonate with my memory of the high dive and have 16 minutes, you might want to watch this film about people at the top of a ten-meter board.
