Hope Deferred

“We are always waiting for something. As a child, except for one day a year, I was waiting for Christmas. In Junior High, it was my first ‘real’ boyfriend and in High School, the results of cheerleading tryout. But waiting for your ‘fun meter’ to go to the top is much different than waiting, sometimes or years, for a crisis to be averted or pain and suffering to end. How, as believers, are we supposed to give thanks and find joy while we wait?”

“Lord, help me to surrender this mess. I am anxious, stressed and physically sick. I am not using your tools to get out of this pit, I can’t remember what they are. I am drowning, help me. Help my unbelief. I have no peace or joy and I don’t remember how to get it. I feel too distracted to minister and my sadness makes me tired.”

“There is something about suffering a long time, years, that short bouts of pain cannot achieve. You simply get worn down. You begin to lose the confidence in yourself to problem solve. Your ability to shoot from the hip keeps failing. Your friends have run out of advice, the instructional manual is dog-eared and faded and you get ‘stuck on hold’, paralyzed to move forward. It’s humbling.”

“God would purge from me the need to schedule my own life but not to quit dreaming. He sometimes would drive the whole trip and other times would give me freedom to set the course. Sometimes it was scenic and still other times dark, rough and rocky. But I would learn that I could always trust him to lead.”

“That bridge, that transition from the life I knew to the one I am living today was a tough one. The lies I believed about myself and God were so deep that nothing but the long, weariness of the journey would force me to get out of bed, grab my bible, head outside and be there...at first sunlight…to gather strength.”

“In those early years, I just felt I was constantly waiting to be delivered from something. I didn’t realize the process was more valuable to God then the answered prayer of ‘make it stop’.”

“The experiences that break you down, chip away at your confidence and sap your strength to go on, just don’t seem ‘godly’ at the time. At least for me, I would tend to feel that I caused or got myself in this mess and God gave me a brain to figure out how to pull myself out of it and that somehow, way down the road, ‘all things might work together for good’. Aware of his presence? Most of the time. Aware of his purpose? Rarely.”

“I’m embarrassed visualizing my role as mom during the early years. I am out in front of the whole family, crouched like a ninja, holding my breath and wielding my sword. In one way, it seems noble…but it’s exhausting!”

“Lord, spare our children’s lives but do whatever it takes for them to walk with you. You are for them, not against them. Help me remember you love my child more than I do. You know them better that I do. May they live for you. Use me to help that happen and should they not choose to follow you in my way or in my time, quiet this mother’s heart to know that your ways are best. Please remind me that you never quit hearing our prayers or quit working on their behalf. I know I will pick them up and have to do this again, Lord, but today…I lay my Isaacs down.”