THE WAITING SEASON. LAYERED WITH PURPOSE.
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Romans 12:12 (NIV)
The process of evolving is constant.
Did you think you’d reached your final destination already? Better yet, do you feel like nothing is moving forward in your life at all in this current season?
It’s funny how “busy” makes us feel like we’re progressing, but when we really stop to ponder, we may also feel a little stuck. Let’s say we’ve been doing the inner work. Taking care of our physical body, eating well, making sure our homes feel cozy. But we’ve reached a plateau. We should be feeling proud of ourselves and yet, there’s a nagging feeling in the back of our minds, settled inside our spirits. We pray, we wait, we pray more, we wait. We give ourselves the pep talk, and some days we may not even be able to muster up the right words for that.
This, my friends, is the waiting room. Nothing is within our control + another day at the gym isn’t going to fix it.
I know this room well. Most recently, it’s the room I returned to the day I looked in the rearview mirror and bid farewell to Seattle and began my journey towards Florida believing I was leaving one chapter and beginning another. Instead, I landed somewhere in between with no clear road map. I entered another season of waiting.
Let me be honest about how I got here, because I didn’t drift into this. I chose it. I packed up thirty-plus years of a life on one coast and drove it across the country to the other. I got rid of almost everything I owned, things I swore I couldn’t live without, gone. The only thing I refused to let go of was my collection of memories. Photos, family heirlooms, all the small things that hold the people + the moments I’ve loved throughout my decades in the place I called home. Everything else I released.
People hear that and say, wow, how brave. That’s not quite what it felt like. It felt like standing in an empty apartment listening to my own footsteps echo across the room, it felt like a brand-new level of fear I hadn’t ever tapped into before and wondering if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. (see: why do we run away from new beginnings)
Here’s what nobody tells you about starting over. After the decision has finally been made, the starting part is easier. You’re running on adrenaline + hope + the excitement of a big decision. The hard part then comes after. When the boxes are unpacked, the newness wears off, and you’re standing in a new state where nobody knows your name, actively waiting for the life you moved for to truly begin.
Lo and behold, it doesn’t begin on our schedule.
I had my own set of expectations. I expected doors to open faster. I expected certain things to fall into place because I had done the hard part, I made the leap. I let go. Meanwhile, I’ve faced challenges here I never saw coming. Financial hardships showed up uninvited, the kind you can’t plan your way around no matter how hard you try. I followed the steps in front of me and I still found myself stretched in ways I hadn’t been in years.
Here’s what I’m learning, I say learning because I’m still in it. God delivers us a promise. In his timing he starts revealing the will for our lives, one piece at a time. Naturally, we get eager and we want to sprint straight to it. But God knows what’s best for us, and sometimes what’s best is the long way through a waiting period we never asked for.
I used to think waiting meant sitting still. Being patient the way you would while sitting in the waiting room at your doctor’s office, scrolling through your phone, until your name gets called. But this season has been anything but still which is showing me that the waiting is active. It’s showing up every day with no proof that it’s paying off. It’s choosing to believe even on the days when believing feels foolish. It’s letting God deal with the parts of me I kept hidden when my life was full enough to hide them.
Because that’s the thing about emptying your life down to a few boxes. There’s nowhere left to hide. Every fear I packed away underneath a busy schedule made the trip with me. The self-doubt didn’t stay in Seattle. In fact, it rode shotgun with me the whole way.
And El Shaddai, in his maddening timing, is using this in-between to do something in me I would never have sat still for otherwise. He’s developing my character in new ways I hadn’t considered. He’s teaching me the lessons I’ll need to handle whatever responsibilities I’m being called towards. I’m starting to understand that the promise isn’t just something handed to you. It’s something he prepares us for to glorify his name. What else could we possibly call it when a season strips us down to the bones and we come out of it, slowly, someone sturdier than we were before?
I’m not going to tell you it all worked out. I can’t, because I’m still waiting. I don’t have the testimony with the bow on it yet. What I have is this: I’m still here. Still showing up, still talking to God even on the days I’m mostly just complaining. And something in me is getting built that I couldn’t have gotten any other way and when I do have my testimony, I will share it from the mountain top, stay tuned…
Maybe you’re in your own waiting season. Maybe you made your leap + now you’re standing in the echo of it, wondering if you’ve heard right.
What if waiting isn’t what’s standing between you and your life? What if it’s the part of your life doing the deepest work?
