I think we all have seasons where we don’t understand what is happening. Something in our life is not going the right way, and no matter how much we pray, it just isn’t happening. We can be down on our knees begging God to show us what we are waiting for, or we can be throwing our fists in the air angry at why He has not provided answers.
I’ve been there.
I’m still there.
Continue reading Holding On in the Midst of Waiting
I think it’s safe to say that most of us, if not all of us, had a dream of what we would be when we were older. A nurse? A firefighter? A princess? A footballer? My dream was that I would be a teacher. I use to sit in my room and pretend that I was teaching my teddies, and sometimes I even roped my brother into playing!
For years I had this longing that I wanted to help other children to fulfill their potential. I completed pre-teaching courses at college and did a number of work experiences at local schools. I enjoyed every minute of it and I passed with flying colours.
My dream didn’t quite turn out as I had planned.
I only just got through college with my A-Levels and I never went to University. The government changed the way that University fees were to be paid, so it was just too much for me to even consider. So, yes, I wasn’t even going to get a degree! Trying to sort out what I was going to do with my life was hard, especially when I didn’t have a degree. I found the options open to me very limiting.
I decided to take a year out to do some voluntary work and to try and get some idea of what I wanted to do with my life. It was only by chance that I ended up working with the Church Army in one of their Volunteer programmes, and I moved to London. Now, 17 years later, I have a lovely family with a wonderful husband and three gorgeous children.
What about the dream?
Maybe, some of us still have that dream though? What do we do? I think that there is only two options we can do. We can either do something about it, plan out how we can live our dream and go for it. Or, we can sit here and accept what has happened. Believe me, I have planned out what I wanted to do…and started it…but it’s just not going anywhere. I’m not the type of person either to sit around and accept things.
So, maybe there is a third option?
Maybe, it’s not my dream that I should be following. Maybe, this is God’s dream and God’s plan.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8
What God wants with me and what He wants me to achieve is probably, and most likely, different to what I would like to do.
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Proverbs 19:21
It’s hard to keep this in mind as a positive perspective though when situations don’t go as well. Especially when family and friends are gone, homes are lost, dreams are shattered…the list goes on.
How do you keep going in the work you are doing then?
I keep this in my mind…
Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus Philippians 1:6
God has started something in our lives, and He’s not about to stop now. Our life is not over until He says it’s over, despite of how we may feel and no matter what we are going through. Our best days are not what has happened in the past. With God, our greatest days are yet to come!
God has started something in our lives, and He's not about to stop now. Click To Tweet Our best days are not what has happened in the past. With God, our greatest days are yet to come! Click To TweetWherever God leads us, He will provide for us, and He will meet our needs. We just need to remember that it’s not the things that matter — our job, our house, or what we achieve. We are God’s product, and we are made up of the moments that made an impact for God’s Kingdom – the moments that we are going through now! Hang in there. Your work that you are doing now is in God’s mighty plan.
Something to think about…
Are you in a place where you feel you shouldn’t be? Try and keep in your mind that it may not be for our benefit why we are there. It may be that we are impacting someone else’s lives without realising, and it will be for a greater good…God’s amazing plan!
Prayer
Lord, I have no idea what you have planned for my life right now and what work you want me to do to fulfill your bigger picture. I ask that you send your Holy Spirit to fill me with strength to help me through the times when I find it hard to see what your plan may be. Help me to realise that whatever is happening, it is for your greater good. Amen
I originally wrote this post as a response to the Five Minute Friday word prompt “work”. Click here to see what other people wrote when they were prompted with this word.
I couldn’t stop at five minutes though as this topic is just so close to my heart at the moment. The waiting period that you go through is heart wrenching at times, but I do believe that what we go through now is part of the bigger picture later on.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got out of the car one morning. With my hands full of shopping, there he was perched on my fence. I had to get a picture, and I had to do it quickly. Who knows how long he was going to be there for. I’m fumbling around for my phone in my pocket, juggling my keys as quiet as I can be so not to scare him away, whilst I had shopping in the other hand. I forgot to bring a plastic bag with me when I went shopping, so yes, my hands were a little bit full. No, I didn’t buy a bag either, to save me all this stress. He stayed there though for me to make one shot…
He got me thinking though. That little robin has no worries, but yet God provides for him. Matthew chapter 6 v 26 says this…
Me? Valuable? I am in a waiting season at the moment and it has left me feeling really inadequate. It’s like I don’t quite reach the mark and I don’t fit in with other people around me. I am sitting here thinking that I have so much that I want to give, but I feel like I am not good enough. I look at other people and see where they are in their lives and what they have achieved to do…what they are achieving. They are doing what God has called them to do and they are doing it so well. And yet, I am still waiting. Am I not good enough to do Gods work? If I am, then what is the wait for?
I know that God has His plans and that everything happens in His time. I know that! I am just so flippin’ impatient. I feel like a little child that is waiting for that special desert. I can see all the good things that will happen, but I can’t have any of it until I have sat through dinner and taken the time to eat and savour everything that is on my plate. But, like that little girl, I just want that sweet thing now.
I know that God is teaching me something at the moment. With the help of a book called “Rhythms Of Rest” by Shelly Miller, I am learning that spending time with God is giving me moments where my heart is open to what He wants to show me. What He wants to teach me. This book is not out to the public yet, and God has been very good to me in giving me the opportunity to be part of a fabulous launch team. I am learning that even just spending 5 minutes with Him helps me to bring everything back into focus.
If making rest a rhythm in your life sounds like something you need, then come and take a look at Shelly’s website to find further information. Although the book is not out yet, you can pre-order it at Amazon by clicking here.
I am still being taught the art of patience. How long can this go on for? Everyday something happens to remind me that I need to either slow down or I need to have more patience.
I subscribe to receiving e-mails from Joyce Meyer. If you have never heard of her, well, you need to! She is such an inspiring woman. She has been through so much in her life and she is using it now to show people how God can turn ashes into beauty. Anyway, yesterday’s e-mail was entitled ‘The wait is over!’ How apt is that? She says that God is passionately waiting for us more than we are waiting for God. She writes the following…
‘We each have things we must do to align ourselves with God. Things like putting Him first, receiving His grace, letting go of bad habits and negative mindsets, forgiving those who offend us, and trusting God with our circumstances. And as we become determined to do so, that’s when great things start to happen.’
As I wrote my first blog a couple of days ago, I let a few people know that I went “live”. From that moment I was constantly checking my e-mails, looking on Facebook and accessing messenger to see if I had any updates or if they had seen my message. Who would be the first person to respond? Would they like what I have written? Will they reject me and what I stand for?
As I write, this is quite obvious to me now that checking my e-mails, etc could be a really bad habit to get into. A friend of mine, who has been blogging for 5 years now, was a little nervous for me as she knows how emotionally draining it can be to get all this started up. She didn’t have anyone there to tell her that it was going to be hard, so I guess she was telling me some hard hitting stuff to help me out. “You are going to be disappointed,” she wrote. “It is more often than not, our own expectations that set us up for disappointment.”
I need to learn to trust God to reveal His plan to me in His own time. For now, I will write and be creative because that is what I love to do. I love to find the hidden beauty that is all around me. I need to focus on Him in all I do, to let go of the bad habits and to be obedient to what God is asking me to do.
When it gets to that time of day…lunch time…my son seems to have an inbuilt mechanism in his brain (or his stomach) and he often asks, “Is it lunch time yet, Mummy?” We have lunch around 12:30pm, so I would then tell him how long he needs to wait. It’s usually not that long, maybe 20 or 30 minutes, but with my son being only 4 years old he has no concept of time. From that first time he asks me, until we sit down to lunch, he must ask me at least a dozen times before I serve it. My reply to him would usually be, “Just be patient!”
My eldest daughter, however, has a better idea and will work out that she would need to count to 60 for one minute to pass by…she might count it a little bit faster though than what seconds should really be counted for. She will then realise that she would need to do the cycle 20 times for 20 minutes to pass by. “But Mummy, that is far too many times to count to the number 60. That would take me aaaaages!” She would start, but then after a few rounds she soon gives up.
A virtue is a positive trait or a quality deemed to be morally good. This is why we hear the saying ‘patience is a virtue’. If we learn the art of waiting, we also learn how to be more disciplined and obedient. Well, that’s what I have read…it is so hard to be patient sometimes and I have certainly not mastered it!
My life at the moment has been all about being patient. It’s taken me three months to get to the point of making my blog live with my first post. My husband thinks that I am really patient. I guess I am when it comes to the obvious things like having patience with my children (most of the time), but when it comes to wanting to know what to do with my life and where its going, I want to know right now what is happening. I guess it’s probably because it’s to do with the unknown. I don’t know where my life is going to at the moment. All I know is that I have a passion and I want to do something about it.
I am currently reading a book at the moment by Sue Monk Kidd, “When the Heart Waits”. I bought this before I went on holiday at the beginning of February, and guess what? Yep, I am STILL reading it! It’s worse than that though… I am only up to chapter 3!! I like reading, but first of all I need to find the time to read. Secondly, I need to find the patience. Sitting down to read a book is the last thing on my mind when I have three children, work full time and do the usual home stuff.
She writes some insightful stuff though about learning the discipline of “active waiting” in a time where life seemed to have lost its meaning for her. She mentions about some daffodil bulbs that she had planted, but had planted them too deep. (That’s the kind of thing that I would do!). She compared though the bulb that was planted deep into the ground with that of her own life. The shoots of the daffodils breaking through the deep soil to form a beautiful plant. Was there something deep down within her own life that was wanting to break free? Something that would turn out to be so beautiful? Only time and patience would tell.
I guess this is what it is like with my own life at the moment. All I know is that I have something deep down within me that is bursting to reach the top and break through. I just need to be patient and spend time with God in prayer to cultivate whatever is growing. Hopefully, over the next few months we will see some fruition.
Let me know if there is something in your life that you feel you are waiting for? Do you know what you are waiting for? How long have you been waiting? Are you a patient person?
