Waiting Feels Threatening for a Reason
Week 1 of our Advent & the Nervous System series
Advent begins in the dark.
Not dark in a dramatic, movie-scene way but in the quiet, ordinary darkness of real life: unanswered questions, unfinished healing, relationships still tender, goals still far away, grief still sitting in the corner of the room. Advent doesn’t start with a solved problem. It starts with a candle.
This season, I’m sharing a weekly Advent series through the lens of the nervous system — because I keep noticing how spiritual waiting and embodied waiting collide. We don’t just wait with our thoughts; we wait with our bodies. And for many of us, waiting doesn’t feel neutral. It feels threatening.
If Advent is about waiting for light, then it’s also about learning what to do when waiting makes your whole system tense. So each week we’ll hold two things together:
what Advent is inviting in our souls, and
what our nervous systems are doing while we try to say yes to that invitation.
Today, we start with hope. And with the truth that waiting is harder than we think.
Why uncertainty feels like a threat
Your nervous system is designed to keep you alive. Even when you’re doing dishes or driving to work, the autonomic nervous system is quietly scanning for cues of safety or danger, a process some researchers call “neuroception,” meaning the body’s rapid, mostly unconscious risk-detection system (Porges, 2022).
Uncertainty disrupts those scans. When the story isn’t resolved, your brain doesn’t file it under “neutral.” It often files it under “possible threat.” Neuroscience describes this as the difference between fear and anxiety: fear is a short, sharp surge in response to a known, immediate danger, while anxiety is a sustained state that rises when danger is possible but unclear (Shackman et al., 2025). Put simply, uncertainty is exactly what anxiety systems are built to respond to.
This is also why leading models of anxiety define it as an anticipatory response to uncertain future threat. When the future feels hazy, your system mobilizes — not because you’re weak or overreacting, but because uncertainty makes prediction and protection harder (Grupe & Nitschke, 2013; Grupe & Nitschke, 2024).
So when you don’t know what’s next, when the story is unresolved, your body may interpret the “not knowing” itself as danger, even if your mind knows you’re technically okay. Research on intolerance of uncertainty shows that many people experience uncertainty as inherently distressing and threatening, and that this trait is tied to stronger threat-network activation in the brain (including regions linked to sustained vigilance such as the extended amygdala/BNST) and to heightened physiological arousal during ambiguous situations (Tanovic et al., 2018; Avery et al., 2017).
That’s why waiting can feel like:
restlessness you can’t shake
tightness in your chest
irritability you don’t mean
doom-scrolling or over-planning
a desperate urge to do something
mental loops that won’t quiet down
This isn’t you being dramatic. This is your threat system doing its job.
And for some of us, uncertainty isn’t just uncomfortable it’s wired to old experiences. Chronic stress and trauma can narrow the body’s flexibility, reducing parasympathetic “braking power” (what helps us downshift). Studies using heart-rate variability (HRV), a marker of autonomic adaptability, show that chronic stress is associated with lower HRV and greater avoidance of ambiguity, meaning uncertainty hits harder and lasts longer in the body (Jiryis et al., 2022; Shaffer & Ginsberg, 2017).
So if Advent waiting feels edgy, heavy, or exhausting, you’re not failing a spiritual test. You’re experiencing the human nervous system.
What Advent says about waiting
Here’s the strange kindness of Advent: it doesn’t rush the story.
The Christian faith doesn’t skip straight to the birth announcement and the angels and the stable and the warm glow. It sits first with longing. It stays with Israel in exile. It honors centuries of unanswered prayer. It makes room for silence between promise and fulfillment.
Advent teaches that waiting is not a detour from holiness. Waiting is one of its main roads.
In the upside-down way God works, waiting becomes a place where something sacred is forming, not because waiting is fun, but because waiting is where trust grows roots. Advent tells us:
Waiting is not failure.
Waiting is not wasted time.
Waiting is not evidence that God has forgotten you.
Waiting is space where love arrives slowly.
Hope doesn’t mean “everything is fixed.”
Hope means “light is still coming, and I will keep making room for it.”
And “making room” is not passive. It’s active, embodied, faithful work.
A gentle reframe for your body
If uncertainty activates your threat response, then Advent offers your nervous system a different message:
“You are allowed to be unresolved.
You are allowed to be in-between.
You are allowed to wait without panic.”
From a nervous-system perspective, safety isn’t only about what’s happening outside us — it’s also about what our body perceives internally and relationally. When the body senses safety, defensive states soften and we regain access to presence, connection, and meaning (Porges, 2022). Advent is a season of practicing that kind of safety: not by forcing certainty, but by choosing to stay with God in the “not yet.”
Waiting is holy not because it feels good, but because God meets us here, in the slow middle, in the space where we can’t control outcomes.
And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is not force certainty, but practice presence.
Today’s practice: name the uncertainty + choose one doable thing
Let’s do something simple and honest.
Step 1: Name what feels uncertain right now.
You can write it down or whisper it.
Examples:
“I don’t know what will happen with my relationship.”
“I don’t know when my grief will feel lighter.”
“I don’t know if my body will heal.”
“I don’t know what the next season holds.”
“I don’t know how to make the right decision.”
Naming uncertainty matters because it helps the brain move from diffuse alarm to specific awareness which reduces the sense of looming, undefined threat (Grupe & Nitschke, 2013; Tanovic et al., 2018).
Step 2: Name one thing you can do today.
Not to control the future, just to care for the present.
Examples:
“I can send one honest text.”
“I can go for a walk.”
“I can drink water and eat something real.”
“I can take ten slow breaths.”
“I can ask for help.”
“I can rest.”
Tiny concrete actions are one way we signal safety to a system that hates ambiguity; they remind the body, “I’m here, I have agency, and I’m not helpless in this moment” (Shaffer & Ginsberg, 2017; Jiryis et al., 2022).
Step 3 (optional prayer):
“God of the not-yet,
meet me in this uncertainty.
Teach my body that waiting is not danger.
Teach my heart that hope is still mine.
Give me enough light for today.
Amen.”
A closing word for this week
If waiting feels threatening for a reason, then compassion is part of the solution.
So this Advent, you don’t have to pretend waiting is easy. You don’t have to spiritually bypass your physiology. You can honor your body’s fear and practice holy hope at the same time.
One candle.
One breath.
One faithful day in the middle of the story.
Next week we’ll explore peace — and why your body might feel like it’s re-living old Decembers even when your life is different now.
For today, be gentle.
Waiting isn’t easy.
Waiting is where light begins.
References
Avery, S. N., Clauss, J. A., & Blackford, J. U. (2017). BNST engagement during threat anticipation. Biological Psychiatry, 82(10), 821–829. Biological Psychiatry Journal
Grupe, D. W., & Nitschke, J. B. (2013). Uncertainty and anticipation in anxiety: An integrated neurobiological and psychological perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14, 488–501. Wisconsin Psychiatry+1
Grupe, D. W., & Nitschke, J. B. (2024). Uncertainty and anxiety: Evolution and neurobiology. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 158, 105420. ScienceDirect
Jiryis, T., Magal, N., Fruchter, E., Hertz, U., & Admon, R. (2022). Resting-state heart rate variability mediates the association between perceived chronic stress and ambiguity avoidance. Scientific Reports, 12, 17462. Nature
Porges, S. W. (2022). Polyvagal theory: A science of safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 16, 871227. Frontiers
Shackman, A. J., et al. (2025). A shared threat-anticipation circuit is dynamically engaged during fear and anxiety. Journal of Neuroscience, 45(16), e2113-24. The Journal of Neuroscience
Shaffer, F., & Ginsberg, J. P. (2017). An overview of heart rate variability metrics and norms. Frontiers in Public Health, 5, 258. Frontiers
Tanovic, E., Gee, D. G., & Joormann, J. (2018). Intolerance of uncertainty: Neural and psychophysiological correlates of the perception of uncertainty as threatening. Clinical Psychology Review, 60, 87–99. ScienceDirect+1