Waiting Isn't Wasted

I've never liked waiting.

Not because I'm impatient in the ordinary sense of the word. I can wait in line. I can wait for traffic to move. I can wait for my coffee to brew.

The kind of waiting that unsettles me is different.

It's waiting without knowing.

Waiting when there isn't a date circled on the calendar.

Waiting when there isn't even a promise that the thing I'm hoping for will happen.

That's a much heavier kind of waiting.

For a long time, I treated waiting as though it were empty space. A hallway I had to walk through before my real life could finally begin. I kept thinking, Once I know... once this is resolved... once God answers... then I'll be able to move forward.

Looking back, I realize how much life I almost missed.

Because while I was waiting for tomorrow to arrive, today kept quietly happening.

My son kept growing.

The seasons kept changing.

God kept answering prayers I hadn't even thought to ask.

Friends appeared.

Books found me at exactly the right time.

Verses I had read a hundred times suddenly came alive.

Healing happened so slowly that I almost didn't notice it.

None of those things waited for my circumstances to improve.

They simply arrived.

I think that's what surprises me most.

God rarely wastes a season.

I do.

He doesn't.

While I'm focused on one unanswered prayer, He's usually answering ten others that I haven't stopped long enough to notice.

Sometimes I wonder how many miracles I've almost overlooked because they didn't look like the miracle I had requested.

That thought humbles me.

I don't think waiting is God's way of putting life on hold.

I think waiting is often where life quietly deepens.

Roots grow underground.

Seeds break open in darkness.

Even a child spends months hidden before anyone gets to meet them.

God seems remarkably comfortable doing His greatest work where almost no one can see it.

Maybe that's why He isn't nearly as bothered by unfinished stories as I am.

He knows what is still becoming.

I only see what hasn't happened yet.

These days, I'm trying to stop asking, "When will this season end?"

Instead, I'm asking,

"Lord, what are You growing in me while I'm here?"

I like that question better.

It doesn't rush Him.

It doesn't rush me.

It simply assumes that this season has purpose, even if I can't yet see it.

Maybe one day I'll look back and realize that the waiting wasn't an interruption to my life.

It was part of my life.

A sacred part.

The place where God quietly taught me to trust Him when there was nothing else to hold onto.

And if that's true...

then perhaps none of this has been wasted after all.

Not a single prayer.

Not a single tear.

Not a single day.

💜