Receiving the Lord's Invitation in Times of Waiting
/KATRINA MORETTA
My fiancé and I started dating when I was thirteen and he was fourteen. No reasonable adult entertained the possibility that we would stay together through the tumult of high school and the jarring transition into post-secondary.
Fast forward almost a decade and we stand at the threshold of marriage, armed with an almost unreasonable amount of dating experience and an extraordinary sense of calm and comfort for a twenty-two and twenty-three year old. As we transition into this new, albeit much shorter, period of waiting, I have begun to reflect more keenly on the place of waiting both in our relationship particularly and in the life of faith more generally.
PHOTOGRAPHY: AN ENDLESS PURSUIT
Over the years, many people have commented how uncommon and antiquated a relationship like ours is. These mildly awkward conversations often end with the phrase “I don’t know how you do it, I could never date someone for that long.” I usually explain that, for whatever reason, the Lord wrote straight with the crooked lines of our relationship.
We went to separate high schools and the same university, were both leaders in our youth groups and university chaplaincy, and both lived in Catholic houses a mere ten-minute walk from one another. Through the passage of many years and the transition from immature teannagers to young adults, we grew up together. The questions and comments have slowed now that we are getting married and the years of dating have culminated to something a bit more tangible.
Waiting has been an incredible blessing for me and my fiance. The time we spend learning and growing together has formed in us a very resilient affection for one another and has given us opportunities to sacrifice, trust, pray, and hope together that we would not have had otherwise.
The daily vocation of waiting provided us an opportunity to love and trust in the Lord and his plan for us, even when the course of our lives seemed murky and difficult.
I feel a particular connection to our biblical sister, Hannah, in this time, who waits and longs for a child. When her prayers are manifest in Samuel, she presents the fruit of her faith and labour back to the Lord. I hope to keep this story close to my heart on my wedding day when I, too, present the fruit of these seasons of obedience and waiting to the Lord to be sanctified and transformed.
There are many seasons of waiting in our journeys of faith, some extensive and some momentary. In this day and age, when time and information seems to move with incomprehensible speed and our hearts long for peace, the Lord asks us to stay still and wait. In some ways, the desire and expectation for every experience to be as efficient as it can be has eclipsed our life of faith.
While many people can easily wait hours for new technology or a favorite celebrity, the virtue of patience is put to the test in a new way when we must wait for matters of the heart. Whether it is the pursuit of a vocation or, even more significant, the Lord of the Universe present in the Eucharist, our response is “I could never wait that long.”
We are called to seasons of waiting, both the anticipated and the unexpected.
Sometimes they are a decade of dating or an extended engagement, sometimes they are an extra period of waiting to receive Jesus incarnate from hands ordained to hold Him.
We cannot know what the Lord desires to teach or form in us in the precious moments, hours, days, months, or years. Nonetheless, we receive His invitation to sit and be with him a while; upon reaching the end of this season of waiting, we may call out to the Lord saying “Oh, my Lord! As your soul lives, my Lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you.”
About the Author: Katrina Moretta is from Caledon, Ontario and went to Queens University in Kingston where she completed a bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature, is currently working on an education degree, and plans to begin her Masters of English Language and Literature in the fall. She and her fiance began their relationship on August 6th, 2011, got engaged on March 25th, 2019, and intend to be married on August 15th, 2020. Over her journey of faith, she has grown in love for Christ in the Eucharist and desires to express that love and devotion in any way she is able.