Waiting is The Hardest Part.

I had no idea how much waiting my journey to parenthood would involve. Waiting for test results that would reveal that adoption was the way God was leading Jeff and I to build our family. Waiting until we could apply to adopt. Waiting to meet with our social worker for our homestudy. Waiting for our homestudy to be approved. Waiting to be matched with an expectant mom and/or waiting for placement of a child.

Through this particular season of waiting I have been reminded that even though God did not take the waiting away, the very thing I often plead with Him to do, He is faithful. It would be easy to blame God and say He wasn’t faithful. That He has forgotten me. I am confident I am not the only one to think or say such things. Heck, the bible is full of people who lost it, while they were waiting on God. Abraham and Sarah, it was 25 years before their promised son arrived. The Israelites roamed the desert for 40 years waiting to go to their promise land. Jacob worked for 7 years and 7 days to receive Rachel’s hand in marriage, and once married to her had work another 7 years. The list could go on and I haven’t even made my way out of Genesis yet.

Waiting is one of those funny things. Because all the while I am waiting I am pleading with God to end the waiting only to realize when the end of the waiting is in sight, I fear that I may have squandered the time the Lord gave me to wait. It seems crazy to say that but I remember when I was waiting for job as a youth pastor I was distraught. When will I get a job? Why am I not getting a job? What is God trying to teach me? What am I doing wrong? Does God not want me to be a youth pastor? Maybe you can relate to the fretting, frantic thoughts waiting can produce. 22 months later as I sat in the conference room of the church that was going to hire me, I remember thinking, I forgot to ENJOY my unemployment. What?! Silly as it sounds I realized that while I hated waiting, it was during that time that God afforded me opportunities that I would not be afforded once I began working. I had let some of those opportunities slip through my hands because I just wanted to be done with waiting on God.

So while I continue to wait on God for the chance to become a parent, I am reminded to enjoy my waiting. Don’t’ get me wrong that does not make it any easier to wait. I think Tom Petty was right on when he sang, “The waiting is the hardest part”. It does however; help me to see that maybe waiting is a gift from God. I have a choice, am I going to choose to enjoy the choices that God has afforded to me as I wait; or am I going to continue to only see the wait as keeping me from something. HMMM I am beginning to see a theme here because again, the choice is mine.