The Day I Stopped Waiting

I don't think I realized I was waiting.

Not really.

I thought I was simply hoping.

Praying.

Remaining faithful.

Trusting God.

And maybe, in many ways, I was.

But hidden underneath all of that was another kind of waiting.

The kind that quietly pauses life.

The kind that keeps one eye on today and the other on a tomorrow that may never arrive.

I wasn't just waiting for God's will.

I was waiting for certainty.

I wanted to know whether the man I married would ever change.

Whether he would ever come home.

Whether our family would ever be restored.

Whether God was writing a redemption story or quietly closing a chapter I wasn't ready to let go of.

I didn't realize how much emotional energy it took to live that way.

Every day felt suspended.

Like my real life would begin once I finally knew the answer.

But answers have a strange way of refusing to arrive on our timetable.

And maybe...

that's mercy.

Because somewhere along the way, I became exhausted.

Not from praying.

Not from hoping.

From trying to possess the future.

One afternoon, while praying, I realized something so simple that I almost laughed.

God had never asked me to solve tomorrow.

He had only ever asked me to be faithful today.

That's it.

Today.

Not next year.

Not twenty years from now.

Not after someone's conversion.

Not after a tribunal makes a decision.

Not after reconciliation.

Not after closure.

Today.

I had spent so much time asking,

"Lord, what are You going to do?"

that I had forgotten to ask,

"Lord, what are You inviting me to do today?"

The answer was surprisingly ordinary.

Love my son.

Go for a walk.

Pray.

Do my work.

Go to confession when I fall.

Study.

Laugh.

Cook dinner.

Call my parents.

Trust.

Repeat tomorrow.

There was nothing dramatic about it.

No thunder.

No visions.

No overwhelming mystical experience.

Just a quiet realization that faithfulness is usually lived in very ordinary moments.

The future didn't suddenly become less uncertain.

It simply stopped demanding so much of my attention.

Sometimes I still catch myself wandering.

My imagination loves unfinished stories.

It tries to write endings that don't belong to it.

When that happens, I gently bring myself back.

Not perfectly.

Just patiently.

Almost the way I would guide a child who wandered too far ahead on a walking trail.

"Come back."

That's all.

Come back.

Come back to today.

Come back to the present.

Come back to the place where God actually is.

I've discovered something beautiful.

God never asks me to live tomorrow's crosses.

Only today's.

And today's cross is almost always lighter than the one my imagination invents.

I don't know what will become of the man I married.

I don't know what God has planned for either of us.

I don't know whether our paths will ever truly cross again.

For a long time, those unanswered questions felt unbearable.

Now...

they feel like God's.

Not mine.

And somehow, that has made all the difference.

I'm beginning to understand that surrender isn't giving up hope.

It's giving up ownership.

Hope still belongs in my heart.

The future belongs in God's hands.

Those are not the same thing.

For the first time in a long time...

I think I'm finally learning how to wait without putting my life on hold.

💜