Waiting!!!

Why is it that waiting is so hard?

I'm sure it has something to do with our need to be in control and independent.

I was thinking a lot about this because our family is waiting for the imminent birth of our daughter Erin's baby. We are at the "any moment" time and yet it could be a while.

She's due May 3rd.

Everything I am planning for this week and the next all are prefaced with, "If the baby doesn't come" statements.

God asks us to live fully in the present and we have a very difficult time with that command.

What's so funny about that is that we are not capable of living in anywhere BUT the present. Yet, we act and plan as though we are certain that the next moment, day, week, month, or even year is ours to fill in the blanks.

Obviously, we have to make plans and have some structure to our future, but it's in the subtle attitude that it will play out just as we expect it to that we see how bound and determined we are to get our way.

I have been learning, through sometimes painful ways, to place all my expectations in God and in nothing and nobody else.

He always knows what is coming and what is most glorifying to Him and best for me, His child...I don't...I'm too small-minded and earthly bound.

I also recall our first pastor's wife once talking about a word study she did on "waiting" on God. She mentioned this:

In a restaurant the word "server" and "waiter" are fairly interchangeable. There's a hint: The way we serve God is to wait on Him...actively wait on Him. We wait until we know what He wants (dare I say needs?) from us and then we serve in that way. Sometimes he just wants us to be there with Him and fully available, but not doing anything that feels productive to us. It just makes Him happy to know we are there...waiting.

I still remember after my dad died the long hours of standing and talking with people at the funeral parlor at the visitation. I was exhausted, sad, and felt like nobody really understood what it was to lose my daddy. I was a "daddy's girl"! 

At some point in those hours I realized that every time I glanced across the room there was my girlfriend Bobbi, just hanging out and she would look over at me and smile softly and nod.

She was just there, but her presence and the fact that when I needed anything I knew could make eye contact with her and let her know with a glance, meant the world to me and eased my heart in those hours.

Maybe it's a little like that with God. He tells us not to fret and we look all over the room, but not at Him. He tells us "just wait on Me" and and we run about making endless plans and stressing out. We could either take the role of Bobbi and be available to God trusting Him to let us know when we should act, "actively waiting"; Or we could even take the role of me and know that He is in the room, in our lives waiting, always there and available, and just make eye contact with Him.

Either scenario, either way, waiting is really only hard when we don't trust Who it is we're waiting on...and He has proven himself over and over again in my life. So. I wait...my expectations are in You alone Lord...at least for this moment...for right now!