Week Eight
I guess waiting is the hardest thing I've ever done.
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired
They will walk and not become weary.
Lord, help us to wait for Your answers. You made her, You know what's wrong, please heal her.
posted by Granny at 11/19/2005 12:30:00 AM
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2 Comments:
Cathi, you know how intimately I struggle with "gift of waiting". I've spent hours, angry hours, tearful hours, begging God to end the season of "watch and wait" we live with in relationship to Nathanael's cancer. But He has different plans...mysterious ones I have yet to understand...
God brought a book into my life long before Nathanael's diagnosis that helped reframe perspective of "waiting" and helped prepare me for the years of waiting that only God knew were yet ahead.
In this book, When the Heart Waits the author refers to waiting as the "rawest kind of agony." And still today I couldn't agree more. But I also can't deny there's a sacredness in waiting, a waiting where we are touched by the kind of transformation only God can bring about.
The book challenged me with questions like, "What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing? To live inside a question and coexist with the tension of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? For these are the seed bed of growth. And I faced the truth that I feared "waiting" because it those "pauses in life" I found myself so close to the dark holes and empty places inside myself.
The author described waiting as the "yeasting of the human heart." And encouraged the reader to remember that...
The unraveling of God's grace takes place in the "middle places" of waiting. Waiting precedes the celebration.
It was this "call to waiting" and the analogy of the cocoon and chrysalis that lead me to the name of my business...and it remains one of the most powerful symbols of the "gift of waiting" - a reality that "wings don't just happen overnight."
My heart aches as you and your crew continue "waiting." I can come alongside, I can pray, oh how I wish I could move the slow motion pain of waiting to a fast forward setting...
Just know the entire crew, CJ especially, remain surrounded by love and prayers and a confidence that the God who created her is at work...as we wait for the celebration.
I can come alongside, I can pray, oh how I wish I could move the slow motion pain of waiting to a fast forward setting...
Thank you, my friend. Your coming alongside means the world, and the slow motion pain of waiting is eased with your loving presence. Your expressions of care for CJ--the jammies, the flowers, the books, the drawer full of goodies while you were here, the ecards, the early Christmas gift, the words of encouragement nearly every day--these have been instruments in God's hands to bring comfort and smiles. Your ways of "coming alongside" are matchless.
Thank you for helping me, helping us, through this "rawest kind of agony."
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