In the Waiting

This morning, at the end of our BLT show, we had a caller whose words cut through my heart, because I recognized them.

They were my words not so long ago.

She said she'd been praying for answers in many different areas of her life for a long season and answers weren't coming. And she's tired of people saying just wait for God's timing...because she'd just like to see an answer to something somewhere.

Hearing the advice to wait for God's comfort isn't comforting.

My mind went back to my own desert season 2 1/2 years ago when the man who said he wanted to marry me then came back and said he needed time...he needed space...he needed to go into a wilderness and I couldn't come with him.

And for months, I waited. I waited while pounds fell off my body because I'd take two bites of a meal and feel so full that I couldn't finish eating. I waited while I wore out flip flops, walking miles and miles around the campus of the school where I worked. I waited while I pumped more gas into my car so I could drive around the countryside because going home to my house seemed too suffocating. I waited while I scribbled entire journals full of prayers - hopeless, longing, agonizing prayers that begged God to heal the heart of the man I loved so he would come back to me and we could be married and start the life God penned for us.

And nothing.

And then finally...an answer.

He said no.

My Isaac walked away, leaving behind a girl who fell flat on her face before her Abba, crying from a pit so deep she didn't even know tears dwelled there. She declared she would never love again because he had been the one God intended for her and she didn't anything or anyone but what God intended.

And I glared at people who said to wait for God's timing. To wait for Him to move and act. That there were "other fish in the sea."

Slowly...almost imperceptibly, God began to move in my heart. He began to heal the brokenness that was there. And the first time I trusted again...the first time I dared to allow someone near me, he did the same thing. Well, he didn't promise to marry me, but he gave me hope of a future...and then he walked away. And I recoiled into my shell and shook my finger at myself for even daring to try.

And I glared at people who said to wait for God's timing. To wait for Him to move and act.

Our caller is right - there is little comfort in those words when your heart despairs.

But then one day God stirred another heart. The heart of a man named Ryan. And as I sat in the darkness of my living room, expecting to hear him say he was in love with....fill in the blank with any one of a number of people who would have loved a chance with him...I heard the words, "I have feelings for you."

Feelings that tumbled into love faster than I even knew possible. And all those things that were broken when Isaac walked away were suddenly whole again. All the broken promises were made again...and this time kept. As I dared to extend love to him, he accepted it and poured twice as much back to me.

I remember in the desert, on a particularly painful and hopeless night, I gripped my heavy Bible with both hands and for hours, I paced my living and dining rooms, reading these words I did not believe...hoping somehow the repetition of them in the suffocating stillness would heal my heart.

 

"But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.' The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him."

I didn't believe them that day, but I said them anyway. Over and over. Through gritted, hopeless teeth, with tears soaking my shirt.

The waiting was long. It was hard. But in that season, God grew me. He transformed my heart - completely without my knowledge. And when the day came that Ryan dared to approach a broken, distrusting heart, I was ready. I was ready for the redemption because I'd been willing to suffer the waiting.

Take heart, waiting friend. The words of Lamentations 3 are true. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Great is His faithfulness.

He has not forgotten you. He is writing your story, even in the waiting. And He's a Magnificent Author.