While You Wait

So I really don't want this blog to be about "That time when I had 10 eye surgeries (there's more coming) and when I couldn't walk for 7 months stories and lessons." But there are just so many things that time of suck did teach my heart. It WAS used for good. It DID seem evil, but was made for good. God has been putting this on my heart to write and I got to listen and God willing, get my point across.

I know of several young, precious women that are going through tumult with their health. They feel as if their body is crumbling and none of the doctors know why. I'VE BEEN THERE!!! With pain so awful it consumes your mind.

I know of several young women who have had a parent graduate to Heaven.

What are the key words here?: "young women".

Traditionally, it's not young people that face these traumas. Whoa, I just felt myself getting a little term paper up in here and it made my soul shiver, not quite like the words 'accounting' or 'finance' but there was some past-stress-fear there... Sorry I digressed, but it's what I do! But the young part is where the enemy will isolate you.

What did the waiting teach me? It taught me to reassess what I'm waiting on or rather WHOM. You are not waiting on doctors or their staff to call you back or results or for the grief to pass (it won't and I'm sorry!) you are waiting on the Lord! And knowing that makes it SO MUCH EASIER!!! Forgive my caps, but I'm adamant in wanting the world (of 3 people) to know that I wasted a lot of life and thought on waiting. It looked like this:
If I just make it to that specialist- he or she will know what is wrong with my body and then I will be healed!

But I never stopped to think that God was healing me with illness. And when I finally stopped and had been to 15 specialists, spent $$$, and traveled to Rochester, MN for Mayo Clinic and back I went: I'm done. Or rather God told me to stop waiting, stop searching. I mean, I still get calls from the genetic doctor at Mayo and letters stating: Unspecified Connective Tissue Disorder.

So I just stopped. I began to live with the pain, accept it and not rationalize it to death only to wake up the next day shocked that it was still there. I stopped idolizing the pain, the undiagnosis, the doctors, the yuck. All by God's grace alone you see.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 Cor. 12:9

Even today, people still ask this former pit-dweller, "Did they ever figure out what it was that caused you so much pain?" I like to throw in a little submarrow bone edema in the femoral neck label (which was the only thing I got), but honestly I know what it was: God allowed that pain to teach me whatever He needed to. In my case it was unconditional love.

And then the pain gradually lessened and I wake up now shocked it doesn't hurt anymore.

But guess what folks, I'm still waiting. I'm waiting to adopt the baby I know with all certainty the Lord has made for us. But did you notice the "I" pronoun? Yes, I'm waiting on my husband to see what I see. He is my practical rock. While I'm a tornado, he is the immovable leather belt that held down Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in Twister, and that's one of the reasons why I adore him. We are praying to be on the same page. He is waiting on my sight to fail and I'm waiting on my foresight of more kiddos. I love him.

And then I let the stillness set in and that small, quiet voice spoke to my heart: You are not waiting on him, you are waiting on Me. Yes, Lord. I'm so sorry I forgot all of what I learned last year and the years before that.

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

Isaiah 30:18

Are you waiting?
Waiting to find the one?
Waiting to find the perfect job?
The perfect house?
The illness to be done?
The kid to stop doing ____________?
The husband to stop doing _________?
To reunite with __________?
I know I have waited on all those things, but now have peace knowing that I'm waiting on the Lord and His perfect will for my life, which is greater than what I can even dream of:

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

John 14:12

Stop waiting on yourself or someone else and wait on Him. That's some true hope right there.