God is Good in the Waiting

 As I scattered white plastic letters across my kitchen counter, I began to search for the words. They’d been gently confronting me for days, and I knew it was time to write them on my heart: God is good in the waiting. Pressing each letter into the grooves of my oak framed Letterfolk board, the words began to take shape and my heart began to shift. God is not only there in the waiting to be found, He is good in the waiting. 

 But if not, he is still good. Daniel 3:18 

It’s funny how sometimes God gives you a word or phrase in one moment, not knowing just how much you’ll need it moving forward. When I first wrote these words, they were about something totally different than what I’m about to tell you here. Maybe one day I’ll get to tell that story, but while we both wait, I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to tell the story I have today. 

Life has always felt full of waiting. And not just the small, everyday occurrences like waiting in line at the grocery store or counting down the days until the weekend. I’m talking about big, God-sized waiting. The kind where you feel stuck and confused, unsure if you’re crazy for waiting or angry for living so long in the in-between.   

Life is full of in-betweens. Percentage-wise, we spend more of our days in-between than we do living out the moments we’re constantly inching ourselves towards. First it was high school graduation, and then college. A big-girl job and then enough money to plan a trip. And then another, and another scattered between birthdays and deadlines, bachelorettes and baby showers, each date checked off the calendar as what's-next neared closer. 

I haven’t checked off all of my “what’s-nexts.” I’m still waiting. Still longing. Still moving, and shaking, and pushing rocks as each inch of root breaks through the surface to find sunlight. I didn’t know it then, when I was rushing from life stage to life stage to work, to home, to my endless list of to-dos. Sometimes the waiting is filled with so much busyness that we forget to look for God at all. And sometimes the waiting is filled with so much pain that we forget he is still good in the midst of our waiting. It’s easy to miss God when all we see is the day ahead--so focused on what’s to come that we miss what’s right in front of us.  

We are all in a season of waiting. Collectively we are all waiting to be able to safely leave our homes, get back to life/work/school or whatever our new norm will be. Individually, we are waiting to find out if we still have a job, if we’ll be able to pay our bills, or what life will look like in the next weeks, months, and even years to come. We’re parents waiting for naptime, so we can finally get some work done, nurses waiting on test results to see if we were in fact exposed, and friends waiting for someone to ask how we’re doing.  

One day, we will all be out of our homes, back to whatever it is that fills our days. That future box on the calendar will finally be crossed off and we’ll be on to what’s-next. Life is and will always be full of waiting, but it is also filled with God’s goodness. Our circumstances may change and surely our emotions will along with it, but through it all, God does not change. He is and will always be good, waiting to be found.