Hello everyone! If you’re reading this it means you stuck with me even when I took a little blogging hiatus, and for that I am so grateful. I have a tendency to be pretty hard on myself, which usually means I won’t do something if I feel like I won’t be able to give it 110%. I just felt like I was getting in my own head and letting negative thoughts and comparisons convince me that I wasn’t posting high quality content. Blogging is something that I’m really passionate about, so I want to give it my absolute best. With that being said, I’m hoping to start posting more regularly again!
As a result of being hard on myself, I typically have a pretty long list of goals that I want to achieve. The issue is, I want to achieve them according to my own timeline. I’m going to be pretty vulnerable in this post, because I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I’ve had a timeline set in place for as long as I can remember. It looked a little something like this:
- Go to college
- Get into grad school
- Get married
- Start my dream job
- Start a family
Your goals/timeline may look similar…it may be completely different, but you get the point. We all have an idea of how we want our life to look. Sometimes it feels like our life is never going to look the way we want it to, or like it’s taking too long. Basically, we get impatient. I have been feeling so frustrated lately. I felt like God was speaking to me, and I thought I was listening. I thought I made decisions that were bringing me closer to God’s plan (and if I’m being completely honest, my own plan) for my life, but I’ve still found myself waiting. The past few months I can only describe myself as a little brat. I’ve been annoyed with God.
“I did what I thought you wanted me to do….so why I am still waiting for these things I want?”
“I’m tired of waiting…I want to achieve my dreams NOW!” (Imagine a toddler stomping their foot in frustration at their parent…that’s me.)
I honestly can’t even tell you how I stumbled across this book, but I’m so glad I did. Wendy Pope does an excellent job of showing us how to handle the dreaded wait in her book Wait and See: Finding Peace in God’s Pauses and Plans. She addresses waiting on job promotions, marriages, pregnancies, and many other events that are commonly longed for. Pope calls these periods of time “wait and see seasons”, and she says it’s important to pause and really think about God’s design. We have to be willing to dig deep and say, “Ok, God. This is really hard, but I am willing to wait. Will you please show me what you have planned for my life.”
A huge part of the wait and see is learning to trust God. He literally tells us in Ephesians 3:20 that He does immeasurably more than we could ever imagine. In order to “wait well”, there has to be a shift in our focus. It has to move from the object of our wait to the Person of our faith. This is definitely the thing I struggle with the most. If I’m not careful, I can easily begin to value the things I’m waiting for more than I value God’s commands. I find myself losing sight of my relationship with God. Before I even realize what’s happening, I’ve switched out the Person of my faith for the object of my wait.
So how should I wait? What does waiting well look like? It doesn’t look like laziness. It doesn’t look like laying down and giving up. It doesn’t look like the absence of activity. Pope says waiting well involves activity, just activity under God’s commands. It also means being prepared for any new command that God may present (oftentimes He presents new commands when we come to Him and ask for His direction in our life). And last, but not least, waiting well means having the ability to do nothing until we receive God’s command. Basically don’t be like me over the past few months and stomp your foot when God doesn’t seem to be giving you your way.
As much as I wish it was the case, waiting isn’t confined to a certain period of life. Unfortunately, there will most likely always be something that forces us to “wait and see”. So why not learn how to find peace instead of anxiety during these inevitable seasons?! I challenge all of you to read Wendy’s book, as it has so much insight when it comes to seasons of life filled with waiting. What seasons of wait have you experienced? Has God shown Himself to you in ways you could have never imagined? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
