Waiting

It’s 3:39 a.m. The room is dark except for a soft glow from the computer screen. On that screen is a blank form waiting for words. There’s really nothing very interesting about a blank computer screen. It has no breath or beauty. It is inanimate, lifeless. And it will remain this way until some letters from the alphabet link up to make a word. One word could do it. It doesn’t have to be a big word, or a fancy word, multi-syllabic, common or unique. Just about any word will do. Spacecraft. Tomato. Politics. See, I told you. Drop a word on a page, right in the middle or over in the corner, and the imagination stirs. Creativity kicks back the covers and whispers: “What if you tried this…”

I know this to be true because I’m sitting here looking at a boring, blank page that is mocking my lack of imagination. It’s 3:59; that’s 20 minutes of watching nothing happen. Maybe no word will come. Maybe at 11 a.m. I’ll still be sitting here, fingers poised over the keyboard, my head cocked a little to the left so I can hear the word arriving. For sure, I don’t hear anything now. Perhaps if I made a cup of coffee; maybe the aroma would activate all those little sleeping cells. Tell you what: while I’m brewing the coffee you pick one of these letter-combinations. It’s 4:08 now; here I go. Does any one of these do anything for you: elephant, starlight, pencil, mud, hiccups, poppyseed? I’ll be back in a minute. I’m back; coffee smells good, doesn’t it. Did I tell you that in writing ShiningSpirit for 13 years, this has happened before? Lots of times. Sometimes it’s the third cup of coffee that does the trick. Waiting is hard, isn’t? Waiting is hard, isn’t it? Waiting is… Maybe your waiting isn’t about putting words on a computer page, but you’ve waited, haven’t you? Prayed for, hoped for, longed for and waited. One of the hardest things to do in this is life is to wait. You know that.

Down in the left corner of my computer screen I see that I have written 365 words. Just words. I want to send you something that will be helpful or hopeful, not just a bunch of letters side by side. But that’s the way it seems to be this early morning: 4:29 now. Where is the word? Where is The Word. I don’t see it or hear it. Do you?

I’ll wait.