For the woman waiting: The Sacrament Gap

There’s a gap in the sacrament. I don’t mean something’s missing, I mean there is a space in time between when the priests touch the bread and the water and when these emblems actually reach my lips and are internalized. There’s this not-yet-received space in time… waiting.

At different moments in my life I’ve experienced this gap differently. As a kid, forbidden from playing with the “sacrament meeting toys” until after the actual sacrament, I used this time to look around at the babies, the priesthood administers, the ceiling, or to read over every-single-little-detail of the oh-so-enticing ward program… and then make a paper airplane out of it. Over time I utilized other strategies for filling this gap - read a hymn, reflect on an image of Christ, or utter a silent prayer. That was fulfilling for a long time, but then, quite oddly, and with a gradual creep, it kind of… wasn’t. The people around me still seemed satisfied, but I felt a little, well, jipped: I’m not feeling “it.” Something must be wrong… with the church? With me? 

Mindful meditation reminds me that there’s another way of responding to the gapping lulls in-between Holy Ghost highs. Mindfulness celebrates a truth that I now see as central to the gospel: It embraces the fulness. 

ALL experience is considered part of the sacred “Practice.” 

Spirituality is not just the “it” of warm-fuzzy Ensign-worthy spiritual epiphanies. Such feelings are real and tender and incredibly good, but they aren’t the whole story. A lot of spirituality, a lot of Zion building, includes, well, feeling a bit jipped sometimes. It’s waiting on unanswered prayers when others seem to have already received. It’s wrestling with God in the darkness. It’s getting lost in the mists while being taunted. It’s weeping alone, while the friends who were supposed to ride this out with you are literally asleep. It’s walking, step after grueling, boring, step, towards a never before seen promised land. There’s nothing wrong. This wholeness is the real “it.”

Now, as I sit in that sacrament gap, waiting for the prayers and promises others have already witnessed make their way to me, I try to hold that space of not-having-yet received, including the fatigue or frustration such waiting evokes, with full acceptance. To truly “embrace the fulness.”

Could you use some more support as you wait in a "gap?" Therapy can help.

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