Waiting

You know that season in your life when you feel like nothing you are planning is working right? When you have a great idea or four, but no amount of research, planning, sweat or tears seems to produce the desired harvest?

That’s where I’ve been lately. 

A year ago my husband and I decided to enter into the world of foster parenting. With all gusto and high expectation of opening our home to a small child in need of shelter we jumped into classes, did the required training and jumped through endless hoops to obtain our licensure. 

Yet here we are a year later still waiting to get our final stamp of approval. Between background checks getting lost (more than once), papers transferring from one caseworker to another, and dealing with a system where the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing it’s been quite the adventure so far. Despite my eagerness to answer this call, my research, my planning sweat and tears, I feel like God is still telling me to continue to wait for His timing.  

The second great plan that I’ve been working on, if you can call it a plan; is to homeschool my children. We have had a fine experience with the public school system, but this desire to educate my children at home is stronger and more persistent than any of the wild ideas I get. I would even venture to make the statement that educating my children is a calling on my life. It is my desire to train them up through their hearts by means of education. Yet, when it comes to timing; planning, researching, sweat and tears, God again is telling me to wait on His timing. 

After a year of waiting on fostering and five months of arguing my homeschooling case, I’m finally at the point of surrender. It’s time that I surrender MY PLANS and really ask God what HIS PLANS are. Though I thought I was doing this all along, I realize now that had He said go “this way” when I wanted to “go that way”, I would not have been ok with His answer. That, my friend is not surrender. So here I am finally at my breaking point:

Lord, 

I give up. I truly do surrender. You are King. You see the full picture and I do not. 

Love, your somewhat stubborn, and very frustrated daughter

Through this season of waiting, God has taught me some really cool things about himself. First and foremost is that He is King. Second is that he sees the whole picture. He really is in control. These revelations, simple as they may be have brought great peace to my weary frustrated heart. 

I received this devotional from a friend of mine. (Actually I received it from two different friends within hours of each other, unaware that the other had sent it. Coincidence? I think not.) Anyway, I love how the author states that King David was "anointed and appointed but he still had to wait 15 years" to become king of Israel. It reminded me that God might have called me to both fostering and homeschooling, but it's likely that He's still preparing me and growing me for His purposes, in His timing. (check the devotional out here: http://www.proverbs31.org/devotions/there-purpose-wait-2013-03/). In addition to that email, last Sunday’s sermon was on waiting for God, and waiting well. The song in my head this morning as I woke up was “strength arrises as we wait upon the Lord” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP2nz6PG8KM ).

“Ahh I hear you Lord, but please help me to understand what you are teaching me, I’m listening!”  The answer this time: “keep your eyes fixed on me”. “Ok Lord, I will, but what does that mean, specifically to me?”  I think it means focus on Him, not my circumstances or the things I’m waiting on. Use this time of waiting to know Him better. I’ll be the first to admit that I need help learning how to shed the weight of my desires. My desire to control these situations, my desire to push my own plans. I need help learning what it means to walk in the freedom of His love. To be freed from the weight of trying to say the right words to convince my husband that now is the time to bring our boy home, or the weight of trying to say the right thing to our caseworker to get her to work faster for us and process our paperwork with a fire under her feet.  This can only be done by drawing nearer to the Lord, and intentionally trying to know Him better. I know he's is in control. He wants good things for his children. I can trust Him. No more pushing or striving to make it all work on my own. Just freedom and peace in waiting and watching. Let me tell you, there is so much peace in surrendering, when you are surrendering to someone you trust, someone who wants what's best for you, someone who is all knowing. 

If this season were likened to farming, I would say the field has been plowed, ground tilled, seeds planted, grounds watered, sun is shinning. Now I wait. Wait for the harvest. I wait in eager anticipation, not pushy frustration. Friend, whatever season you are in, I pray you might be able to find the joy in it, because there is joy even in the season of waiting.

Signed,

A woman after God's own heart