waiting

I talked with my husband about the fact that I was so wound up the last few weeks and that I thought I needed to stop and just wait.  At first it came out sounding like "wait for you to catch up to me," which didn't sound right.  What I had meant was that I need to stop and wait to hear him before I go off and just assume or decide or do on my own.  I had been making decisions and pushing an agenda and striking out on my own quite a lot.   

Most people don't like to wait, I know I don't - it takes that active control of myself I had talked about.  And it is very much different to how I am used to being and doing.  So then there was an internal conversation with myself about whether and when he would want me waiting for him?  Waiting on him?  Big difference between the two - interesting that. 

[Yes - I see the obvious -  that my mind immediately took off on its own to figure it out, make some decisions for myself.  Not waiting!  I actually talked to him about that too.  At this point, I can work on controlling my words and my actions.  I'm not sure that I can or should try to direct what thoughts come to me or not, only how I act on them.  What I choose to do or say, and what I leave unsaid and not done, will influence what I learn and where my thoughts go from there.]
 
I thought about the various ways the word waiting is used.  The meaning I had been thinking of was the obvious "stop what you're doing and not act until some other thing comes to pass", or to just "bide your time."   But then there is the idea of ladies-in-waiting, waiters, waiting on people, as in serving them.  I suppose the point is that they do have to be still and bide their time, not act until requested or directed to do so.  Interesting that waiting in this context is synonymous with serving. 

It also occurred to me that there are major world religions which have a very large component of waiting - waiting for the fullfillment of a covenant, waiting for the second coming, etc...  So, waiting is having faith that the promise will be met.  But it is the structure of the relationship too.  And it is on some levels both the reason and the means by which honor is shown. 

Then I remembered a book I have always liked - a major theme of the story is that waiting is praying.  In this case, the characters were waiting to be able to be together, but there were tasks they each had to accomplish first, things they needed to learn - pretty cliche story line really.  The waiting as praying in this context though brought everything to an individual, personal relationship level.  It was not about a religion dictating a heirarchy of subservience.  It was about each person's faith and beliefs guiding his or her decisions and that being lived through their relationships. 

This is all awfully big and deep stuff considering it started with me thinking about much smaller, day-to-day stuff.  It's important too though.    But there are the fun aspects to waiting, or there are the more overtly  D/s uses of waiting.  Other people have written about it much better than I could. Mouse talks about being made to "be still".  Jz talked about the challenge of being open and vulnerable while waiting (here).  And Aisha wrote about the very erotic aspects of being made to wait (here).

Waiting, for me, means that I have to be quiet and still - I have to listen.  Acting means deciding and often means assuming something about what he wants.  By no means do we, or could we, live our lives if I waited for him to make every decision for me.  Life would come to a standstill and he would never even consider that: too much work for him, and a total waste of me.  But there are many opportunities for me to honor  him and serve him by waiting.