You will never find "waiting" on a list of someone's favorite things to do. "Oh, I just love to wait!" is only said by someone with a strong passion for sarcasm. Everyone can agree: waiting is not fun. At all. Since we hate waiting so much, you'd think that after all these years of Earth life we would have done something to get rid of it. Some cure or something?! But no, here we are, in 2017, and we're still waiting. All the time. What is up??

I can handle the long lines or the busy restaurant kind of waiting. On a good day, I can even withstand the "on-pins-and-needles" waiting for a grade. (That's pushing my waiting stamina a little too far for comfort, though! :) ) But the tough waiting is in those situations where I have no control and no idea what is going to take place. It's in the moments where I'm completely in the dark. I've got some hopes for what I'd like to see on the other side of the waiting, but are those hopes going to be the ones I experience for real? No matter how hard I try to push back that darkness or take back the driver's seat to get moving again, I still find myself in that empty, answer-less waiting room. Anybody else been there? Anybody else asked, "What is the point in all of this?"

I wish life didn't bring this heavy, scary waiting. I really, truly do. I think we all do. We all want the perfect career, the perfect spouse, the perfect decision to come right away. We don't want to be stuck on some unknown road, not knowing what's to come. But that's just it: we don't know what's to come. We may feel this way in those stressful, waiting times, but even when we feel like we are in control, do we ever really know exactly what's in store for us? We don't have the whole picture, but there is someone who does.

"Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD." Psalm 27:14

God has the whole picture. He knows what is going to happen (and what isn't going to happen) for each and every one of us. I would feel a whole lot better with someone like this in the driver's seat, wouldn't you? So if He takes us into a waiting room, there's a reason. There's something better He has on the way. On our own, we might have jumped at a chance that wouldn't have been right, wouldn't have given us as much joy. But with Him in charge, we can be sure that the turns and the waits are going to prove to be much better than any we would've taken ourselves. I don't think this verse is telling us that we have to wait for the Lord to "show up." The waiting room is not as lonely and dark as it appears to be: He is right with us. If we just wait beside Him a little bit longer, though it takes all our strength and heart to do so, we're going to see some incredible things.