Waiting Well

During this Advent season, I participated in the Ascension Advent Challenge, Waiting Well, with Father Mike Schmitz. Through daily devotionals and homilies, we were invited to prepare for Christmas alongside Mary and Joseph, learning how they waited with faith through uncertainty, struggle and hope as they awaited the birth of Jesus.

This reflection was especially meaningful in our busy household of 10 – with grandparents and adult children returning home for Christmas. For the first time, I was able to slow down, step away from the pressures and chaos of the secular world, and rest more deeply in the spirit of the season. Advent became less about doing and more about trusting.

Parenting, too, is filled with long seasons of waiting – waiting for growth, healing, clarity, or change. Waiting well, with full trust in God’s faithfulness, makes all the difference. When we believe that no time is wasted in God’s providence, we can trust his perfect timing, even when answers are unseen.

In these seasons, we may pray fervently for our sons and daughters without visible progress, or even experience setbacks. This is precisely when we are called to wait well – to trust well – and sometimes to suffer well. Trusting that God loves our children even more than we do brings deep comfort and renewed faith, reminding us that he is always at work, even in the waiting.