In patience and in waiting

Waiting.

What does it mean to wait? How do we experience waiting? Do we even recognize when we are waiting for something?

In a culture, a world, a generation marked by instant gratification, waiting is a foreign concept.

If we want something, we expect to get it; we demand it, we feel entitled to it, we refuse to not have it.

That “it” can be anything. Many things in this life, as most of us know it, are accessible at our fingertips. How has this impacted our ability to wait?

Last night, I joined a married couple (dear friends of mine) on a panel discussion for female young adults on dating and discernment. What a joy it was to share to such an eager and excited audience.

One question that stood out to me as a theme of the night centered around waiting: how does one wait during times of, well, waiting?

My answer was similar to the following, while not quite as eloquent: “Our entire life is about waiting; we were created for God and by God, and we will continue to wait until eternity with Him.”

As children, we cannot wait to be teenagers.

As teens, we cannot wait to be in college.

In college, we cannot wait to be adults.

Our lives are, ideally, about having to wait.

We wait to grow up. We wait to graduate. We wait for our first job (and second, and third, and fourth). We wait for a relationship. We wait for a proposal (or to propose). We wait to get married. We wait for children. We wait for the pregnancy test to show a result. We wait for labor. We wait for the baby to start walking, talking. We wait for the next baby (and so on). We wait for paychecks, for job interviews, for promotions. We wait while our parents undergo medical tests and the results. We wait for licensing tests and results. We wait for holidays, birthdays, milestones. And then we die. When we die, we await judgment.

Indeed, every single moment of life is about waiting…until He tells us we don’t have to wait anymore.

Yet, instead of waiting gracefully, patiently, deliberately, we choose not to. The God of our universe asks us to wait, but we decide not to. He isn’t moving fast enough for our liking, so we make "it" happen ourselves.

One thing I reiterated last night was simply this: God created us, and as a result, He isn’t going to leave us hanging. The key to “master” waiting, which we never actually will, is simply to lean into trust.

Trust in His timing. Trust in His goodness. Trust in His word.

And I asked them to identify those fears: what is it that worries you? What are you so afraid of?

For me, it took learning that God is intricately involved in EVERY single detail of my life. What I say, what I do, how I dress, how I act is a reflection of Him. We are made in the image and likeness of God, not each other. Is our life a reflection of the God who made us? And do we really believe that He cares about all the details of our lives?

I know what life looks like when I manage it under the guise that I have to control it. It’s messy. It’s disastrous. It’s self-serving. Why?Because in my smallness, I am incapable of seeing into the future. So God taught me to wait.

How does one wait while waiting? You just do. You do it with hope, you do it with faith, you do it with love.

You do it because He asks you to. You do it in humility, in submission. You do it because if you don’t, it’s even messier.

You do it “in patience and in waiting” because His plans far supersede anything we can imagine for ourselves.

Ultimately, you do it because you love Him.