Learning to Live in the Waiting

It’s 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

By tonight, somewhere around 7:00, the snow is supposed to start. Meteorologists are already warming up their biggest phrases, calling it the storm of the century. Bread, milk, and egg shelves are thinning out. Batteries are charged. The air has that tight, metallic quiet that always comes before a serious snowfall.

So today is a waiting day.
I remember another one like this. The blizzard of 1978. I bundled up and walked to school, snow already biting at my cheeks, only to find the doors locked. School was closed. No announcements, no alerts. Just a long walk back home through drifts that were already beginning to feel unreal. Even then, there was a strange stillness to it. The sense that the world had paused without asking permission.

This week brought another kind of pause. Bob’s mother entered hospice care. If you’ve ever lived inside that space, you know how little language there is for it. Nothing is happening, and everything is happening. Time stretches and contracts. You wait without knowing what you’re waiting for, or when it will arrive. You listen differently. You breathe differently. You learn how thin the present moment really is.

Plans feel suspended. Projects aren’t blooming. Conversations trail off into ellipses. There’s no clear next step, no satisfying sense of forward motion. Just this long, quiet stretch of not yet.
And I’m realizing something important.

We live in a culture that treats waiting like a problem to solve. Fill the time. Optimize it. Turn it into productivity. But nature doesn’t work that way. Nothing blooms in February. The ground rests. Roots hold tight. Energy pulls inward. What looks like stagnation is often preservation.

Snowstorms don’t ask us to hurry. Hospice doesn’t run on schedules. Winter doesn’t care about our timelines. All of them insist on the same lesson: slow down, pay attention, stay present.
Waiting is not empty time.
It’s time that asks something different of us.
It asks for patience without guarantees.
For tenderness without outcomes.
For trust without proof.

So today, I’m letting the waiting be what it is. Letting the snow come when it comes. Letting the unknown unfold at its own pace. Letting this season be quieter, softer, less demanding.

If your life feels paused right now, if nothing seems to be blooming, you’re not broken. You’re not behind. You may simply be exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Hibernate.
Listen.
Rest.

Spring will handle itself when it’s ready.