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Apr 05, 2021 17:00pm

In the Waiting

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Take what you need – that was our motto.

Only pack the necessities. And even then, we still worked it down more and more until it all fit into one box.

Building a house is tough.

You have this dream of what it will look like and be like when it’s completed. For us, we knew we needed to be on-site because of the dogs, so we bought a camper and lived in it for a year.

But that wasn’t the original plan.

The builder told us it would only be a few months. The house plan was easy: square shaped, 40×40 square feet with very few interior walls,

But, it turned out it wasn’t as easy-peasy as he thought it would be.

And inside the camper, well, it was cramped to say the least. We had an energetic, full-sized lab, a cantankerous 16-year-old Jack Russell terrier, and two adults living inside it.

And we waited.

We watched the house being worked on, but we knew something wasn’t exactly right.

Shouldn’t they be farther along? That board is crooked.

Those beams aren’t even secured, so how can a whole floor be put on top of them?

Then, they just wouldn’t show up. Weeks would go by and no one would come. It was one thing after another, and we were fed up with it.

Our “few months” were over, and the house looked like a mess.

Seasons changed and so did our crew. New people came in and gave us the bad news: they needed to tear it all down and start over.

None of it would have held.

Anger, frustration, irritation, sadness… all these emotions ran through me. I felt lied to, taken advantage of and hurt that people could be so careless and reckless with our dream home.

Then one day, finally, that camper pulled out of the driveway and we began unpacking boxes into our new home.

The wait was over.

We sat on the porch, coffee in hand, as the fall breeze blew leaves across the rocks and dirt.

We talked about the year in the camper, how it seemed like just yesterday we had moved in. And through that experience, we realized several things: a lot of stuff isn’t necessary to live off of and you can’t rush everything and expect something great in the end.

We also now had some great stories to tell. Like one time, the gas ran out in the middle of the coldest night ever and there were ice crystals forming on the carpet when we woke up.

Or another time, I was in the shower and had told Shaun the night before to make sure the tank was full of water… and mid-shower, mid-shampoo, the water runs out. I had to go out in my robe, sudsy-wet hair and all, to fill the tank while the crew was there working on the house.

Or the time the ladybugs invaded, and our entire ceiling was covered and it looked like it was moving because all of them were crawling around.

We had lots of great stories.

As much as I wanted our house to be done, as much as I wanted it all to be over, as much as I wanted to hurry it along, in that moment, I realized how much we had endured during the wait and how I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

There is a couple in the book of Genesis who had to wait a lot longer than one year for what they wanted – Isaac and Rebekah,

When Isaac was 40, he married Rebekah. In Genesis 25:21 it tells us he prayed to the Lord for his wife since she was barren and in the same sentence it says she conceived.

I know, you’re thinking, what does that have to do with waiting? Look at the last part of verse 26.

“Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.” (Genesis 25:26b)

Shortly after they were married, that’s when Isaac started to pray. Do the math with me: 60 minus 40 is 20…

20 years.

They waited 20 years.

Can you imagine what they felt?

They may have been asking to themselves: “Why is God not answering? Is He not listening? Has God forsaken us? Does He even care? Am I not good enough?”

We can only guess at how they felt, but because I have friends who have struggled with infertility, the hurt they must have felt was real.

I don’t claim to know everything or understand the mind of God, that’s pure foolishness. But I do know what He’s taught me in the waiting.

God is listening.

He hears our prayers and the deep desires of our hearts, but His will always prevails. His timing is perfect, even if it may not seem so to us. The waiting allows time for teaching, growth and maturity.

When we realize we have no control over the situation, we grow a stronger dependency on Him.

Just as it should be.

If you are in “the waiting” today, I’m praying for you.

Trust God. He’s working all things together for your good.

He has a plan. Sometimes it works out the way we hope, and sometimes His will is different. Sometimes it’s not what we want, but He knows more than we can imagine.

I pray you have strength in waiting, that you rely on Jesus and look to Him to give you what you need every day.

I pray when you look back on the time you waited you see how God’s hand guided you, how He provided for you, and the great lessons He taught you along the way.

We all have dreams, but don’t miss out on what’s happening today by focusing so much on the tomorrow.