WAITING AND TRUSTING
“Wait”. It is a word that God uses often with me. Sometimes I wonder what exactly I am waiting for. We think wait means to be still and paused, until the appointed time. Perhaps we are even standing and tapping our foot, releasing the energy of impatience through our movement as we wait to move forward. What if wait is less still and linear and more circular? Maybe even a spiral?
Each step, each day holds “kairos” or moments of time yet I am often focused on “kronos” or minutes of time. When my focus is on wanting a change of season in my calendar of time, I am not in the present, looking for the moments that God has ordained for now. It is difficult to do because as humans in a modern world, we are constantly preparing and looking to the next season. In the middle of August, I tried to buy a bathing suit. It was 100 degrees outside and the season for bathing suits and yet all I found was sweaters. I may not be able to change how stores run their calendars or business but I can make different choices in my own life.
For example, my husband recently retired from the Navy. My mom had a stroke and my family is in a unique waiting season, having moved to OK to help my mom for a half the week and TX with my in laws for the other half of the week so that my children can be involved in a homeschool community while John looks for a new job. We are waiting to discover where our new home and community will be. While waiting, I have a choice. I can be focused on the minutes passing slowly, the frustrations and the inconveniences of riding the elevator of life or I can choose to pay attention to whom God put in the elevator with me and why.
I really want to get to the next level that God is taking me to but true peace and patience is resting where God has me. I have to realize that this kind of waiting- paying attention to the God ordained moments in time- is the only way to get to the next level. Sometimes, the people in the elevator with us are people we want to run from; perhaps even people we thought we were comfortable with until we find ourselves in close proximity to them and we begin to feel triggered and stuck, maybe even claustrophobic. These triggers are an invitation to us for more healing, more forgiveness, more of God and all that He gives and is. If I get off the elevator on a level God is not taking me to just to escape the elevator and the people in it, I will be like the Israelites in the desert, wandering 40 years instead of 11 days.
I must surrender, take a deep breath, and invite Him into my struggle. When I do, He never fails me. He speaks. He teaches. He empowers. As He reaches out and pulls me up from sinking, I firmly plant my feet in the midst of the storm and begin to walk on water.
“Wait” isn’t standing still. It is walking the spiral of life, staying in the moving elevator, and looking to Jesus while I walk on water. It is understanding that the waiting in the elevator is as important as arriving and that He is in the elevator with me. What are you waiting for?