Learning to embrace the in-between time

For a while now, I’ve been living in a state of in-between. My daughter has turned 18 and left for college, but I’m still learning to say good-bye to my baby girl. My son has received a chronic migraine diagnosis, but my husband and I have not yet found him effective treatment. I have left the conservative faith of my upbringing, but progressive Chris­tianity doesn’t yet feel like home.

It hasn’t been easy, this in-between time. I’ve wrestled and complained—hungry to arrive, to find closure, to move seamlessly from before to after. It’s a familiar struggle for Christians. Though the life of faith is often described in terms of joyful arrivals and culminations, in reality we spend a lot of our time in between. Though we know that Good Friday gives way to Easter, we live our lives on Holy Saturday, waiting for the fullness of resurrection’s promise to unfold. Sometimes it feels as if the whole planet is straining with impatience, yearning for something better. Sometimes I wonder if in-betweenness is the quintessential human condition.

In his poem “For the Interim Time,” John O’Donohue describes in-between as a familiar place that no longer looks like itself. “Everything is withheld,” he writes, “and the way forward is still concealed.” Interim time, in other words, is disorienting. The God we think we know suddenly becomes unfamiliar. The paths we’re used to walking grow strange. We wander and stumble, feeling lost, exiled, or punished.