Always Waiting

Recently, I was looking up names that mean "resting," "abiding," and "waiting"and something struck me: we are always waiting. 

In the Bible names bore testimony to the person they described. Jacob was named for the ankle he grasped during delivery, but for a long time he lived his life in fulfillment of that name as a deceiver. 

I love parsing the meaning of names, but most people in the United States choose names they find pretty or that honor an important person in their lives and personal history. I usually disregard the name meanings that aren't so nice, and yet sometimes they make me think. What does it feel like to live with that name meaning? 

I love the name meaning of "waiting on/with God," but I bet for some who bear it, it can feel like a curse. Like it's destining them to a life of forced patience and deferred desires that are always a season of waiting away. But that's an image of comparison. That's waiting on the human plain. This person got married before me, but this other person had kids before them. Someone is always beating us to the things we want. And when we finally get them, our focus will shift to a new area of waiting. And that's not inherently a bad thing; it's part of being human. We wait on marriage, on kids, on careers, on news, on progress, on friendships, on community, even on death as I've noticed in many who live to see their body failing. 

Sometimes what we're waiting on is frivolous, sometimes it's deeply and personally intertwined with the purposes God gave us, and sometimes its absence can leave real consequences in our lives. Like anything in life, it has degrees which make it easier or harder to endure. But waiting isn't just about enduring until the end. 

This is a life of waiting. 

Fulfillment in one area will bring new joy and blessing, but it won't save us from waiting. Waiting is always framed as a bad thing, but it's about how we wait. 

Treating the concept of waiting like a period of endurance will lead to an exhausting life. But when we know waiting as a place of drawing into God (even in seasons where the waiting tests our faith), the burden becomes easier to bear. And it's for those seasons of testing that we need to learn how to wait well.

Waiting reminds us that we are not in control, and while the process of surrendering is often a place of tension, stress, and anxiety, surrender is one of peace, stillness, and trust. When we wait on God, we learn how to receive. And in this world of striving, that's a lesson we desperately need. Whether we're receiving the things we're waiting on or more of God, Who will teach and strengthen us while we wait, we are learning an essential lesson of abiding. Of being still. O knowing the Lord is God. 

Waiting can bring testing of our faith, but it can also be one of the greatest gifts in our lives. And that seems contradictory in a culture of instant gratification. 

The place God has most taught me how to wait is in singleness and marriage, and I'm so thankful that I'm waiting on those now. He has been faithful in the waiting. He has made me a better wife. He has taught me principles that are essential for my marriage. He has drawn me into Himself. But He's also been teaching me how to wait. And learning to wait well at a young age is priceless. 

Waiting well is a gracious gift from God. It allows us to put down the stressors of the world, to relinquish control, to trust the One who fulfills and makes us secure, to be still, to delight, to tarry with our God, and to find rest for our weary souls. We will always be waiting in this life. And thank God we are not waiting in vain. 

He cares about the journey as much as each individual ending. He prioritizes the small moments of daily life, the ones that most shape us, over the big events that mark our lives. He cares about who we are becoming, and He positions us to become more like Him. He blesses us with a life of waiting on Him, of growing our dependence on Him, of discovering our delight in Him. A life of releasing our burdens to Him, of surrendering our will to His, of increasing our trust in Him, and of finding our identity in Him. 

Waiting doesn't mean greater blessing in the fulfillment (though this is sometimes the case), but waiting always means a greater blessing. Because the answer to our prayers is a blessing. And so is the waiting. They are both good gifts from God that we can embrace today. 

So we can come today with all our imperfections, with all our frustrations, with all our control, with everything in us, and we can lay it down at the throne of God. We can rant and rave against God for what He hasn't answered. We can let Him know how stuck we feel. We can tell Him that His provision wasn't enough. Waiting is hard, but He can handle the whole process.

This post is absolutely not about discarding those emotions and pretending we're happy knowing God is in control. I regularly am not. But this post does mean that we can practice giving those to God. That we can develop habits of bringing those to Him and letting Him breathe into them. And as we practice vulnerability with God, as we pour ourselves out before Him and make ourselves bare, as we open ourselves to Him even in our anger and frustration and impatience, we receive Him. And as we receive Him, our waiting changes. As we give Him all our concerns, He trades them for peace. And we may go back and forth a million times, but His gift for us will always be the same, and He'll continue to walk with us as we learn to receive it.