Most Christians are no stranger to hearing– or advising others– that “It’ll all work out in God’s perfect timing.”
This is a true statement, but that doesn’t make it sting any less.
I’ve been on both ends of this: giving unsolicited advice to my friends as they endured various seasons of waiting, and hearing it myself as I complained about similar seasons of my own.
Like I mentioned in a previous Weekly Page, “Trust + Pain”:
“Where trust exists, so can pain and sorrow. They all can coexist. [...] One of the most compelling feelings in life is trusting in God with all your heart, yet still feeling a bit letdown when things don’t go in the way that you expected.”
Without sounding like a broken record and fully rehashing that sentiment, I wanted to take a moment to give everyone– and myself– a quick reminder:
Even when it feels hopeless and your prayers just aren’t getting answered in the way you originally hoped, God has already worked out something far better for you. Acquiring patience as a virtue is often a painful process, but it’s one that we must endure to the end for our own good. There are so many lessons in the waiting.
In my own life right now, I’ve been praying and praying for a few things to be sorted out– some struggles I’d like to be rid of, and some things that I’m just desperately hoping for.
Since the beginning of September, I simply haven’t been myself in the way that I have been in the year leading up to it. I’ve hated every second of it– hated myself through every second of it. It’s been so exhausting.
Through all of that uneasiness and turmoil in my heart and mind, I just kept desperately praying that God would not allow me to separate myself from Him due to my own struggles and laziness I was muddling through after everything that happened last month. I felt so stuck and distant from Him, but also felt so sick at the thought that I was disassembling the routines and behaviors that He’d helped me build up all this time.
I slowed down on Bible studying, stopped being as intentional with prayer time, and lost my momentum. Shortly after I noticed myself starting to get angry again, which is the last thing that I wanted. But it felt like the floodgates had been opened, and I just couldn’t stop feeling all of the rage that I’ve been working so hard to dismiss and disarm for so long now.
That rage is mainly what led to me feeling so distant from Him. Who am I to bring all of my anger to God, who has saved me, protected me, and forgiven me even though I am as sinful as they come? Who am I to pray to Him in a state of such unnecessary rage when he died for me? Like, what could I possibly have to be upset about in light of that sort of gift?
So I kept my prayers very plain in comparison to the way I usually sit at His feet– very careful to not direct any of my anger onto Him, even though there were some things I was upset at Him about that I really didn’t want to acknowledge. I honestly worried that if I really aired all of that out and thought about it for too long, that I might overthink and try to sabotage this relationship with Him that we’ve built up so carefully and intricately over the past few years.
It wasn’t until I finally did air out those grievances that I finally felt like I could enter His presence again, fully.
Now I’m not saying to go be a brat to God in prayer because He didn’t give you what you wanted in the timeframe that you hoped for. I’m saying that He wants all of us– truthfully, fully, and faithfully. If that means you have to bring Him a bit of frustration respectfully, then so be it. But even if you didn’t have any respect left in you, I know that He’d still love you through it and forgive you anyway when all is said and done.
I will say that it’s not over, but I do feel as if I’m on the mend. My prayer time has greatly recovered, I’m finding joy in Bible studying again and trying not to be so hard on myself, and I’m working on just trying to let Him love me exactly where I am amidst this season he’s put me in.
Waiting seasons are awful– but just like autumn, winter, spring, or summer, they all pass before you know it.
They may not end with the picture-perfect, fairytale ending that you hoped for, but that’s because He wrote one up for you that’s way better than you could have ever imagined.
So keep faithfully walking through it all, and don’t be in such a hurry to skip to the end. If you have Him, you have everything that you need, right now.
Until next time,
— E. Byers, author of The Grassy Laine
