Waiting

I don’t know how to wait.  Which really stinks when all I’ve been doing for the past few months is waiting.  And it’s not even that I can’t wait.  What I do instead is set a predetermined amount of time that I’m willing to wait; and then become extremely frustrated when I find myself waiting beyond that time.  

If you’re human, and especially if you’re Christian, I guarantee you’re waiting for something right now. Maybe it’s a job, results from a test, an open door.  Maybe you’re like me and you have no idea what you’re waiting for.  Whatever the scenario, I’m going to go ahead and say that the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life is to wait for something.

So I decided to get to the root of why I hate waiting so much, and it just so happened to link up with my previous blog post.  All the reasons I hate waiting are exactly the same things that I think God wants to change about me: my inability to give up control, my impatience, my fear of depending on someone else, the belief that I know the better way to do things, looking out for my own interests first, my anxiety about the future, being self-absorbed.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, my friends.  Why bother to spill my guts via the internet?  Because I get the feeling I’m not the only one in this boat (iceberg…boat…this mixture of words isn’t comforting).

Back in Bolivia, I read something that really left an imprint on my mind.  And then I forgot all about it.  So today, God conveniently chose to remind me.  I read the following: “Much, much stress results from your wanting to make things happen before their times have come. One of the main ways God asserts His sovereignty is in the timing of events.”  Basically, this inability to wait comes down to not believing that God is sovereign; that He doesn’t have everything in His control, and that His ways are not the best ways.  It’s a lack of faith and of trust. 

Sadly, I can’t come up with a way to get rid of the waiting.  I’ve tried mind games, schedule fillers, paradigm shifters, false hopes, plan B’s (not the pill).  At the end of it, God is just as stubborn as I am.  And you know what, maybe that’s the whole point.  God’s not letting us skip this one because what He needs to teach us is probably too valuable to pass up.  He’s just doing us a favor since we can’t see it yet.

Take two of these and comment in the morning.  They may help to ease the pain.