Good things are worth waiting for, we’re told — and they generally require that waiting. Lady in Waiting, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.
We lived two years in a rustically renovated barn while we built our house, paying for it as we went. There were six of us, four of whom were under 11, two significantly so.
The most frequent comment I heard, when the subject of my living in a barn came up in casual conversation, was,
“Oh, I would never have the patience to do that!”
And while patience is tirelessly extolled as a virtue, somehow every person managed to infuse the sense that there was something oddly wrong with me for being so . . . patient. I mean, nobody else on the planet could do what I was doing, so there must be something wrong with me for my extreme, over the top, beyond what Jesus could do, patience.
(This is the same reaction high school students employ toward the reader and thinker of the class — “Oh, you’re so . . . smart!”)
This is patience. This is stillness. Sometimes I’m like this; sometimes I’m not. Queen Anne’s Lace, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.
Let me disabuse any of you, right now, of the notion that I am patient. I’m American, after all, which means I like waiting about as much as I enjoy cleaning hair out of the sink traps, and at birth, I was not gifted by God or fairy godmother by an extra dose of long suffering serenity. Actually, I think the bottle got knocked over and some of my portion spilled out onto the coffee table. (Until I had kids, I considered myself a fairly patient, agreeable sort of person; one night of a crying baby forced me to review my interpretation of myself; as the number and age of children increased, they joined me in assessing my tolerance level, with the universal concurrence that it’s relatively low.)
But you know what? I am not the only impatient person on this planet. We all are, to some degree, some of us having finessed our soft happy voice and expression of peace to an art form, but given the right circumstances, we all snap. While my living in a barn for two years was a choice, because I wanted to live many years more in a house that was paid for, it wasn’t easy sharing 1,000 square feet with six people, taking baths in a large plastic toy storage container, and washing dishes in a 1950s sink with a six-inch depth. When we weren’t working, we were building the house. Two years seemed like a long, long time.
“But it was your choice.”
Sometimes, seriously, it’s better just to nod our heads sagely and say nothing.
You rarely go wrong when you keep peacefully silent for a bit and contemplate the situation. Peace, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.
Whether or not what we’re doing is our choice, life happens — or actually, appears not to happen — and we spend a lot of time waiting: when you’ve lost your job, there’s only so much paperwork you can do applying for another one; the rest of the time is waiting. When you’re handed a bad medical diagnoses, there’s treatment of some sort, but most of the time is spent waiting for it to work, or not. Relationships? You’re up; you’re down, but anyone who has a phone and a new boyfriend/girlfriend knows that you spend more time waiting for a text or a call than you do talking.
You wait. You pray. You ask God to Do Something. And you wait. And wait. And wait. And while you keep living — believe me, if you don’t put up the sheetrock on your walls, no one’s going to volunteer to do it for you — what you really want to happen, the answer to your prayer, seems to take a long time.
Waiting is a universal part of human existence, and God understands this. Psalm 37:7 says,
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.
I can honestly say that of the ten words in this verse, I have spent eight years doing one of them — and it isn’t “patiently.”
You can’t quit. You can’t walk away. You can’t say, “That’s it. I’m done playing now.” When things are out of your hands, they are in His.
So add the rest of the nine words, not the least of which is the first two: be still. Rest. Breathe. Stop freaking out. Truly, trust This Guy. We live in a society of people who Do Things, but sometimes, the one and only thing God is asking us to do is nothing. Just wait.
I’m workin’ on it.
This Woman Writes by Carolyn Henderson 
“You can’t quit. You can’t walk away. You can’t say, “That’s it. I’m done playing now.” When things are out of your hands, they are in His.” by Steve Henderson With your permission, this will be my new refrigerator magnet once I pull out my calligraphy pen. I’ve said something to this effect many times, to many people, (just yesterday to my mother), but simply said, I like your way the best.
Thank you, Margie. I am reminded of Nik Wallenda walking across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope. Once you’re out on that thing, you can’t just decide to stop. Either you get back to where you started, or to the other side (and when you’re halfway across you may as well make it to the other side), but you can’t just sit in the middle and announce that you won’t go any further.
Some days, my friend, I so dearly wish I could — but the option simply isn’t there.
Today I needed these words of confirmation as I wait on my Heavenly Father to completely provide for our trip to Africa next month. As I was praying just a few minutes ago, I told the Lord that I would not give up and would not stop believing. HE IS ABLE!!!!! And I believe that He has planned this trip. I choose not to worry. It’s so easy to worry that nothing is happening when you wait. And it’s easy to feel guilty that you’re not DOING enough while you wait. There are times when the Supreme God just instructs us to cry out to Him and to wait. It feels as if you’re twiddling your thumbs doing nothing. But… waiting on the God of the Universe to work out things PERFECTLY is something.
May we all wait patiently, and expectantly.
Even in that we need help. And our sweet, and loving God is able and willing to help us with that as well.
Thanks for sharing, my sister. 🙂
Alecia — I pray with you today. It is so very very difficult. I read an essay by E.M. Bounds in the summer 2013 Prayer Focus mini-mag of Samaritan’s Purse. A Christian writer who lived from 1835 to 1913, Bounds in the first paragraph says this:
“The answer to prayer is the part of prayer which glorifies God. It is not the act or the attitude of praying which gives efficacy to prayer. It is not abject prostration of the body before God, the vehement or quiet utterance to God, the exquisite beauty and poetry of the diction of our prayers, which do the deed. It is not the marvelous array of argument and eloquence in praying which makes prayer effectual. Not one or all of these are the things which glorify God. It is the answer which brings glory to His name.”
Bounds’ essay goes on to expound that it is the ANSWER that matters. This may seem odd, but this is a revelation to me, because I have been steeped with the idea that “God is shaping me,” “God is testing me,” “God is working through me as I wait,” and on, and on, and on.
While elements of this can be true, they mask the true reason why we pray — we are communicating with God, and we want Him to communicate back, by ANSWERING the cries of our heart. When I reread that first paragraph of Bounds, I think — I have done every single one of those actions of prayer that he describes. And I have believed that they would work.
But it’s not up to me to convince God, to impress God, to guilt God, to look so pitiable that God will take pity. I ask. He listens. He answers. Six words — so much to grasp and understand.
Please keep me up to date as to how your Africa situation is going, and how God answers your cry. If you do not want to do it publicly, my e-mail is carolyn@stevehendersonfineart.com.
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