7 months has passed in a blur since my last post. Life as newlyweds with two young children has been hectic, in every sense of the word! We are loving every minute of spending time together as a family, well almost every minute. Any parent who says they love every second of their child's temper tantrums, sickness, and overall childlike behavior, is lying. Plain and simple! But despite that, we are so thrilled to have this time to build our family as we learn the dynamics of this new phase of life.
I decided now was the time to share some of the things the Lord has been teaching me through these last few months. Now that the school year is winding down, I feel like I am able to clear the cobwebs out of my head enough to publish these thoughts. In my last post I mentioned that we didn't know what the Lord's plan for our future was, but that we were "expectantly waiting" for Him to reveal His plan. Well, we are . . . still . . . expectantly . . . waiting. Perhaps we've just been so boggled down with life, or perhaps my head has been stuck in the sand. Either way, we haven't felt the pressures of waiting quite like we are right now. We've been through a roller coaster of emotions as we get our hopes up about a potential direction from the Lord, only to feel as if the door has slammed in our faces. After hitting a very low point recently, we stopped and cried out to the Lord. In the days that followed I felt the Lord speak to me more than I had experienced in a very long time. What a relief to know that God has not forgotten us!!! He knows we are still waiting for Him to guide our steps, He knows that we are feeling stuck, He still knows. I can't even begin to tell you how much peace that gives me. For anyone else reading this, I hope that brings you peace, too. God never forgets His children!
So, why are we still waiting? Good question. One that I could give you multiple "possible" reasons: God is still working on us. He is preparing the way for us. He is trying to teach us something. We need this time to focus on becoming a family. We're not ready. Our future isn't ready. I could go on and on. It could be that all of them are true, or none of them. But the truth is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter why God chooses to work in our lives the way He does. All that really matters is whether I am willing to place all my trust in Him. That sounds simple on the surface, but when days stretch into weeks, then into months, it becomes more difficult to trust that He is still working. My faith begins to waiver as I question God's purpose in all of this. Then doubt sets in as I begin to wonder if there's something wrong with us, or the way we're doing things. Then comes the wake up call. That moment when the ground feels like it has fallen out from under you. When your only possible response is to cry out to God. Do you know that moment?
These are the verses the Lord brought to my mind in that moment:
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might He increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:28-31 (ESV)
"They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength." That's exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. I'm not just waiting without purpose, I'm waiting for the Lord. I've heard these verses all my life, even memorized them as a young girl. Yet they have more meaning to me today, than ever before. I know what it's like to be waiting. The story of my life has an entire chapter (or two) on waiting. Just read through the events of the last two and a half years of my life and you'll see the periods of waiting all throughout.
Once again I'll ask, "Why am I still waiting?" I believe the reason can be found in the devotional Streams in the Dessert, from the excerpt on May 17. "Often the Lord calls us aside from our work for a season and asks us to be still and learn before we go out again to minister. And the hours spent waiting are not lost time. . . Quite often God will ask us to wait before we go, so we may fully recover from our last mission before entering the next stage of our journey and work." Even if this isn't the reason, as I said before, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that we are still expectantly waiting, and trusting, and hoping, and praying that the Lord will reveal His plan for the next step in our future very soon.
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