Day 12: Waiting Together
Editor’s Note: On the twelfth day of our 2025 Advent blog series, “Visions of Visitation: Love in Motion,” FMS Executive Director Maggie Conley reflects on how she waits with lay missioners and DC Service Corps volunteers and witnesses the growth that they experience during their waiting.
“People who have to wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow.”
– Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Waiting
It seems a bit ironic that a promise could “allow” someone to wait when waiting is so often hard. Waiting feels less like a promise than a punishment- I admit I struggle to be patient for what is there for me at the other side of the wait. I either want to know WHAT it is, or if I know what it is, I want to get there and experience it NOW.
When Mary sat and waited together with Elizabeth, understanding the seed that was growing was literal as Elizabeth was with child, but what happens when that seed is not so clear and our mind continues to be focused on what we will see at the end of our waiting?
As the Executive Director of FMS, I have the privilege of waiting together with our DCSC volunteers and lay missioners. It is perhaps the one aspect of my life where I do appreciate the waiting, and at times I am perhaps even giddy about it. I see how a lay missioner or volunteer comes to FMS with their own ideas of what they will experience and how their time with FMS will impact them. There is an openness in each individual, but it’s impossible not to have some image and expectation that has drawn them in some way to be a part of FMS. What that draw is varies significantly- the call to mission, a location, a change, desire to deepen their Franciscan connection, or the job experience.
I like to think that FMS is part of gifting the promise that allows them to wait. Through formation, through the community they are waiting with, and through the structure of our program overall, the seed that is planted when they say yes to FMS starts to grow.
Throughout the time that we are “waiting” together for what is to come, I smile when I see glimpses of that growth and at what is at work in them. I know that it is not probably not until they have stepped away from the day to day that as a lay missioner or volunteer that they will fully see what has grown.
What a gift and a blessing to be sitting alongside them and waiting, and to see the communities waiting together- sometimes aware and sometimes completely unaware of what seed is growing within them individually.
Questions for Reflection: Who are you being called to wait with? What glimpses of growth do you see throughout this time of waiting?
