Feeling Impatient? Find Solidarity With Our Blessed Mother

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Lately, my prayer life has been filled with a lot of contemplation about waiting.

There are a lot of things we wait for in this world: a date, a spouse, a dream job, children. Some people wait years and years to have some of these things become part of their life, some wait hardly at all. Does it seem to be kind of chaotic? And unpredictable?

And in thinking about this, what has come to my mind is how Mary had to wait in her life. Mainly, for her son’s public ministry to begin.

I mean, we know that He was God from the beginning! There was the presentation at the temple… and that time they forgot Him for three days in town and found him preaching in His Father’s house… it’s not like He spent His early years hiding. He and His parents were part of the culture and their world.

I’m sure He acted like how the Son of God would act as He grew up…? (How would that look?!)

But Jesus also didn’t start His public ministry, I mean really begin, until He was 30. THIRTY. 

So, He not only waited THIRTY YEARS to start making some big splashes, His mother had to wait thirty years for it to happen.

When was the last time you waited 30 years for something? 

Dare I ask… are you even 30 years old? And if you are, how old were you 30 years ago? 

We know that she knew from the very beginning, from the night He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in her womb. She knew that He was God’s Son, sent to humanity to redeem us back to Himself. This is a huge undertaking. And it’s why we, as Catholics, put such an emphasis on her yes, her fiat. It would have been very easy for her to kind of lose it at such news and expectation. And yet she said, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord.” We could all take a page out of her book on living out God’s Will over our own

Part of me wonders if she ever wondered when His public ministry would begin, though. Thirty years is a long time— 30 years ago from now was 1992. The 90s were just beginning, what a wild decade that was. Harry Potter books hadn’t even been released yet, can you imagine? Google hadn’t been launched yet! So much has happened since 1992. And yet she waited all that time for His public ministry—which ended with His crucifixion—to begin.

I’ve wondered if she waited nervously, anxious for His publicity to begin because she knew He wouldn’t be safe under her roof anymore? 

Or did she experience doubt in those thirty years of waiting?

Praying to God, “Hey… I know you said He was your son… but it’s been… 15 years, and nada. Nothing has happened. He’s still just my boy. What’s up?”

A friend of mine says he thinks that once Jesus turned 30 (which was the acceptable age to be taken seriously on teachings at that time in history) and started His public ministry, she must have been dreading it in a way, like she knew it had been coming. He was all hers for 30 years, but now He had to go out into the world.

The truth is, we don’t know what she was thinking for those three decades. Maybe she was patiently waiting, maybe she had moments of doubt or confusion or wonder, maybe she was nervously awaiting His 30th birthday.

My ultimate point is, in all of those feelings, we can identify with Mary. We can find solidarity in her waiting, because our timelines are CLEARLY not always the same as God’s

I could come up with a hundred different examples of how my timeline has not matched up with God’s.

Some bigger, some smaller. It ranges from 20+ declined job applications to living in one of the hottest cities in the world (which I question every summer, believe me.) I’m sure you could too! And we could perhaps find some solidarity and laughter in how our plans have been gravely mismatched at times.

Maybe you are in a place where you are patiently waiting for something—a first date, a good long-term relationship, a spouse. She is there with you, too.

Maybe you have moments of doubt and confusion or are in one of those moments right now.

She is there with you, too. I invite you to invite her into that. How did she deal? How did she cope? She was waiting for a good thing! She was waiting for her son to fulfill His ultimate mission. But she still had to wait. You are waiting for a good thing too.

Maybe you’re all kinds of nervous waiting for that text or call back, that second date, those feelings of consolation in your relationship to keep moving forward in it. She is there with you, too. She knows what it’s like to be nervous, I’m sure. We know she was immaculately conceived but she was also human and experienced human emotions, one being anticipation

I invite you today to take a lighter breath in your waiting, knowing that Mary had to wait 30 years for her son to start what He came to do. And that waiting sucks, and our plans not lining up with God’s isn’t always the most fun thing to experience, but He did that all to Mary too. There’s some reliable solidarity there. Dive into that!

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