A few years ago around Christmas, I knew my parents were giving me a silver bangle bracelet. I’d shown my mom the exact bracelet in the store. She made an excuse to go back to the store that same day. When I put all the clues together, I was fairly confident the bracelet was mine.
Sure enough, about a week later my parents put a little gift bag under the tree with my name on it. When I picked up the bag, it jingled. And because it was in a bag, if I looked closely I could see what might be the outline of a bracelet against the white tissue paper. Confession: On my way to meet some friends for dinner, I actually took the bracelet out of the gift bag, wore it, got the compliments I’d hoped for and then slipped it back under the tree later that night.
I could try to justify my impatience, but the truth is this: I hate waiting. Waiting drives me crazy; it seems so pointless sometimes.
That kind of impatience leads to the occasional holy nudge to slow down and realize something particularly wonderful: God speaks to me in my waiting. So far, some of the most beautiful moments I’ve spent with Him have happened while I’m just waiting.
Ladies in Waiting
So much of my time is spent waiting for something. I waited for high school to end so college could start. And then, not even a year into college, I started to daydream about that glorious day when college would be over and I never, ever had to take another math class. Now I’m waiting for the day when my student loans get paid off. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about how fun it will be to be married, because I’m still waiting for the sweet, wonderful guy I’ve prayed for to finally show up.
I live for carpe diem opportunities—days when I spin into a whirlwind of busy fun chaos, not weeks and months that require patience and waiting. Despite my open-the-bracelet-two-weeks-before-Christmas mentality, God is patiently teaching me some lovely truths about my wait.
What We’re Waiting For
The first is this: I can wait in anticipation, not anxiety, on what He has promised me in His Word (Isaiah 40:31). Our deepest hopes and dreams were laced into our hearts by God. His plans for us are good plans that provide and bring hope. Even when we think the story is at a lull, He’s working all things together for our good. His sovereignty is like a rope that pulls us through all that muddy insecurity and loneliness that comes from a long wait. When I look at all those stories about people in the Bible who were frustrated by waiting, the end result is always the same: God is faithful.
The second thing is this: He still works through me in my waiting. Ironically, some of my favorite pieces of writing in the last year have happened while I was stuck in traffic. I always think I have to be somewhere beautiful to write: somewhere near an ocean or in a cabin up in the mountains. Sunsets over the water always inspire words. But so does the sun reflecting off the spinning rims of a purple car in the other lane. Even when we feel stuck, there’s still plenty of beauty to be seen. Even when you feel stuck, God is doing beautiful things in your life. Watch and see.
And finally—and this is the really hard one for me—God is teaching me what it means to be a woman of resolve and not give up when the wait seems really long. I’ve been reading the book of Ruth; she was no stranger to waiting and uncertainty. There’s a scene in the beginning I find particularly convicting. Ruth, Orpah and Naomi were all on the road to Judah, the land where God was providing for His people. When doubts started to pop and sizzle (just as they do for us when the road seems totally unclear), Orpah gave up, turned around and walked back to Moab.
In many situations, we have the same choice those women did: We can be the girl who runs back, who couldn’t wait, who wouldn’t move forward because the answers weren’t crystal clear. Or we can be the girl who keeps moving ahead, even when the wait is long, because we’re confident in God’s provision.
Beauty takes Time
Some of the brightest and most beautiful moments in a lifetime come at the end of a long wait: graduations, great jobs, marriage, motherhood, travel, missions trips. You are a work in progress, too, and God is always at work in you, always knitting together the details of the woman you’re becoming.
You haven’t been forgotten, left out or left behind. “Wait for the LORD. Be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD,” writes the psalmist (27:14). Let’s lock arms and move forward together, running ahead even when everybody else gives up. And if He asks us to wait, we’ll wait and let Him work in us through that part of the journey, too. In His hands, even the wait becomes something beautiful.
