THE WAITING GAME

Sometimes life is easy, you get into a groove, you're content and happy to be where you're at, but other times...other times things are just hard, and you're uncertain of where you belong, where you're headed, where you want to be...things feel awkward and off balance and you can't quite find your niche, your place. Anybody ever felt this before?

I hadn't for a long time. Our little family coasted along for quite a while (years, actually), content with where we were at, checking off goals we'd met here and there, having babies, growing our family, tweaking our home, etc. etc.

We've been playing house for almost eight years now and God has blessed us richly in more ways than I can keep track of. But it has to be said that life runs in cycles and seasons, and right now, I'm in a winter of sorts. As an individual, as a wife, as a mommy. There are a lot of things personally that have built up and have to be dealt with. There are forks and bends in the road where Michael and I have decisions to make that effect where we will be and what we'll be doing for years in the future.

There are questions I'm asking over and over again, every day, that just don't have answers yet. For anyone who knows me well, you know that patience is not my forte, and that waiting is difficult for me. I become anxious, I doubt, I chew my fingernails, I get snappy and short with people (namely my husband, poor guy). I'm not a good waiter. I just want answers, and I want them now. It sounds ugly and selfish, but it's the honest truth.

We've been at this stage, in this winter season of waiting, for months and months now (since last summer, really), and it's wearing on me - spiritually, emotionally, physically. Waiting is just hard. But I also feel like (and hope!) I'm turning a corner in this waiting game, able to see some of the good things God is doing for us while we wait. There is a side of the Lord I am getting a taste of that I've never experienced before. I'm receiving measures of His patience that I've never really known before, and His grace and sweetness. While I wait, God fills me up with good things I'd never anticipated or planned on, and that's a wonderful thing to experience, full of things I wouldn't have wanted to miss. I talk with Him far more often, and far more urgently now than I have in a while. As I wait, I have time to get things done that have sat on a to-do list somewhere for weeks or even months. I am learning a lot about myself; waiting for something seems to serve as a mirror of sorts where a person really has to look hard at their reflection, uncovering what makes them tick, what motivates them, what they get up in the morning for.

The long and short of it is, waiting is hard, it's not fun, and it can be a somewhat miserable, wintry existence, but it teaches a person so much and stretches us like nothing else can. So even though I can't say I'm enjoying the wait, I can't really begrudge it, either. All I can really do is what I've been trying to do for months, and that's just to sit quietly before the Lord, and wait.