Waiting & Hurry

I feel like in some ways I’ve been in an active waiting season since the end of 2021. I say this because even though I was waiting for the desires of my heart and wanting them before that, my hope was a fragile thing that amounted much more to wishing and fearing. 

But in December of 2021 on a night I had nothing in my brain to pray, God brought me to a Scripture and transformed my heart. He gave me confidence in the fulfillment of my desires. This epiphany came after a season where God was working in my heart to strip so much of the worldliness from my desires, casting my vision on His ways instead, and it gave me the trust that He longs to grant those desires even more than I long to receive them because they are part of His design for me. Since then, everything was different. The waiting can still be hard, but in this season of trust He has continued to teach my heart time and time again, deepening my understanding of the waiting.

In 2019 I remember trying so hard to surrender my desires to God, but I could never willpower my way into it. I never addressed the deeper self-reliance that left me holding on. The belief that I was the only one who cared about me receiving my desires (well, I mean, my loved ones cared about them, but I didn’t know God cared). I came to God much more with a sacrificial mindset and with a predisposition to believe whatever was in me was of the flesh. I feared that God would not grant me my desires, and though I believed He would make that end good, I wasn’t ready to give up on my desires either. I didn’t trust Him with them, so I could never surrender them to Him. Confidence was the key. When I looked to God, when I started to trust Him, that’s when I was finally able to surrender.

That surrender took a lot of stripping. Always one to strive, God had to remind me time and time again to rest in Him. To tarry with Him. Not simply to trust in Him but to still with Him.

Recently, He’s been teaching me that longing is not the same as striving. One weekend out of nowhere I was hit with a deep, almost physical ache for the fulfillment of a particular desire. My chest tightened with it. My stomach swirled with it. It ebbed and flowed as I went about enjoying my day, but in moments of stillness it would hit powerfully. 

And it was good. 

It wasn’t the most comfortable necessarily, but it was good. It wasn’t full of striving or despair or impatience. I had the earnest desire and delight to wait for God’s timing whenever that may be, but I’ll also freely admit that I would've much preferred if the fullness of that timing were to start the next day. But it didn’t, and the ache died down and the longing remained. Because God gave me these good desires, and it’s good to long for them. Because we have a God who longs. He longs for our salvation. He longs for our restoration. When we long, we are bearing His image and stepping into a part of His character. But that longing is steeped in trust, which keeps it secure. 

Trusting God in the waiting doesn’t make it easier—it’s still plenty difficult and sometimes harder than others—but it makes it good. It makes it better. It makes it purposeful. Because our God wastes nothing. 

Last week someone prayed over me that God was removing hurry from my heart in the waiting, and I had a realization: hurry belongs to anxiety. 

Over the years of active waiting, my heart has been tempted to hurry. I have wanted God to act immediately many times, but it’s the times where I feared not receiving my desire or not stepping into them well or missing them or not doing what I needed to be doing to get them, that I needed God to do it immediately. That I felt like I couldn’t wait any longer. That I looked to change circumstances to secure me from my fears. My heart turned to hurry. 

In this culture of productivity and fear, hurry leads us. And not just busyness, though that is a problem. Hurry.

We rush from thing to thing because we need to. Our minds won’t slow down because we think our hurry will get us to the next place. Like thinking about how to get what we want and spiraling into it will progress us getting it. We hurry because our hearts are not at peace.

I remember the first time I believed my anxiety could get better. 

My anxiety was crippling and had become part of my identity, the first thing anyone needed to know if they really wanted to know me, and I didn’t think there was a way out. Not until a friend of mine asked me point blank if I had ever tried working on it.

I was taken aback. I could do that? I didn't have to live like this? I could be more than this? 

So I tried. And that belief that things could get better, that I had the ability to try, changed things. It was a long process that honestly took years for me to see results, but I remember the victories of those. Of anxiety hitting me when I walked into a gym full of people. Not anxiety hitting me for hours or days beforehand, ruling me before, during, and after. Instead, it hit me during; just during. It was huge.

And in the years following I had more victories. I got better at catching myself before I spiraled into instant replay mode. My anxiety became more a thing of moments and events than it was the way I lived my life. And now even so many of those moments that used to make me anxious are ones I now have freedom to step into. In my daily life I’m more likely to experience anxious thoughts in passing than to be consumed by them even in moments more inclined towards anxiety.

That’s not to say I don’t still experience it. My heart was full of hurry when I felt like I wasn’t performing well enough in my job, and God had to still me. My heart was full of hurry when I was dating because I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with my uncertainty, and I didn’t even notice the hurry in my heart until retrospect. My heart was full of hurry when I job searched, feeling the weight of responsibility, of what I should do, of what made me a worthwhile person, and God had to break down my self-reliance.

And yet in all these hurries, God is faithful. God is still working. When anxiety hasn’t been my focus, He recognized the source of my hurry and has been actively removing it from my heart. He’s been growing me and honing me, and part of the waiting is because He wants me to step into my desires without hurry filling my heart. He wants me to enjoy the gift.

I don't want to live a hurried life. I don’t want to fret over my blessings or my burdens. I don't want to be ruled by having to figure things out immediately or accomplish things or know where my life is headed or be productive or whatever other fears creep into my security or my self-worth. I want God to remove all the hurry from my life, and though I never thought to ask for it, He is.

He is moving in the waiting, and His heart is changing mine in ways I see and in those I never expected.