Waiting on Expectant Tiptoe: Where Terminal Meets Eternal

White winged dove on budded saguaro

Chuckwalla front view

Chuckwalla Back view

I hike up a trail at South Mountain, the largest municipal park in the nation for more than an hour, and I see no one. No person, that is. I do see a coyote, three cottontails, numerous chippies, a pair of Gambel’s quail, a roadrunner and many white-winged doves, singing their mourning song from the top of the saguaros.

It is strange to be so alone, just me and the desert creatures. When I first started, I encountered joggers coming back from their morning run. But that was three miles ago. After Fat Man’s Pass, two mountain bikers passed me. For a short spell, I kept pace with the riders as they did more pushing of their bikes over boulders than riding.

But now, it is simply me and the singing white-winged doves.

The doves are waiting, waiting for the saguaro fruit to ripen, a yearly feast of red deliciousness. I never recognized, until this year, the waiting that happens in the desert. I have never been good at the waiting. Not behind slower vehicles. Not behind slower seasons.

Not behind God.

I strain against the tug of the inner behind-ness in waiting. I want to be up front. In control. In charge.

I stop hiking to pull out a package of fruit snacks. As I place my foot on a medium-sized boulder, a six-inch black tail disappears a foot below my shoe. A lizard? A snake? I feel no need to investigate.

A little chippie hides in a neighboring cactus, the spines of the hedgehog cactus longer than one paw that clutches a yellow blossom.  As he scurries away, I take a sip of water and head down the trail.

After 100 yards, I stop again; puzzled by the silhouette I see on top of an outcropping of boulders. A chuckwalla suns himself against a backdrop of blue sky, his skin so black he appears charbroiled as he rests on a lichen-sprinkled rock. Only his striped tail boasts any color, but even there, the scaly red stripes are subdued. For over five minutes the miniature dinosaur poses, not twitching a muscle, as if frozen in a sunbeam of waiting. 

The desert is a place of waiting. Waiting for the dawning. Waiting for spring and winter rains. Waiting for the change of season.

A testing ground for life.

We all have our places of waiting.

Waiting for the children to be grown - or at least out of diapers. Waiting for a new job. Waiting to be noticed. Waiting for summer vacation.

Waiting.

Cancer patients have their own unique waiting.

Waiting for test results. Waiting for the next chemo treatment. Waiting for the alleviation of side effects. Waiting to be accepted for a clinical trial. Waiting for life to return to normal. (Whatever that is). Waiting.

Last week an online support group I am involved in for breast cancer survivors waited with one of the leaders as she was admitted to the hospital in another state. Some waited at her bedside, but most of us waited as updates were posted on social media.

The loss before the loss of cancer is a difficult waiting.

Our friend, Michelle Middleton, died on Monday. Michelle and I never met, but I interviewed her for a series on courage, back in October.

Michelle had a handle on the waiting. With a Stage 4 diagnosis, she could have lived a defeated, morbid, resigned life.

Instead, Michelle lived life to the full. She understood the reality of the waiting from a terminal diagnosis, but it was always through the lens of eternity.

“Everyone’s terminal. But if you have Jesus in your heart and you believe that He truly died on the cross for you and rose again to be with God for you, we’re not terminal … we’re eternal!”  - Michelle Middleton

All creation waits for that day. I sense this in desert places on barren trails. I sensed it at the virtual bedside of Michelle. This expectant waiting.

The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own, Paul writes in Romans 8:19. (Phillips translation.)

All creation waits. The desert waits. People wait. Cancer patients wait.

It is possible to wait on glorious, forward-leaning, filled-with-anticipation tiptoe.

For a life beyond this life.

Yet in the waiting, live LIFE!

"I will live until I die," my dad used to say, "and then my real life will begin."

Real. Life. Worth the wait.

Michelle Middleton