waiting just to wait again

I'm sitting in sweatpants on a futon that has dog pee on it. With a messy kitchen to my right and jelly beans to my left. Books, Bibles, thank-you notes are strewn out on the floor. We are out of toilet paper so I have been using penguin napkins to take care of business until Jon comes home from work and saves my bottom.

I ate two cupcakes tonight and tried to compensate by mixing up healthy things in our Vitamix and then attempting Kale chips (which I made ridiculously too salty but I would still recommend them). I haven't made our bed in days. I was supposed to clean today. I feel like a senior in college again, scrambling and mess-making. Eating non-dinner foods because I am too lazy to be creative when Jon is working and I'm stuck at home with cupcakes on the table with homemade frosting that I swear is laced with something deliciously illegal.

The past 24 hours have entailed some anxiety. I just want to go do ministry. I don't want to call people who don't want to give me money. People who will turn us down or not call us back. This MPD (ministry partner development = support raising) thing is not my cup of tea...I don't even like tea. I desperately want to fast forward to the good part.

I have felt this way before, though. I remember way back in high school when I couldn't wait to get to college. In college, waiting to find a husband. And then when I found him, waiting until we could get engaged. And then waiting until we could get married. I remember waiting until I'd never have to practice piano anymore. When I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and waited upon the Lord for that as well. And all my life has just consisted of waiting. For what? I don't believe that any aspect of life will ever be perfect, but I long for things as if they will be. As if being in ministry won't hold its own set of issues. My heart longs for life to be problem-free, proof that it was made to reside in perfection. Really, my heart is longing for heaven.

Instead, I transfer this longing into future stages of my life. I imagined married life as blissfully perfect (though I would have never admitted this). My heart always started sentences with, "Once I get there..." and never really finished them. As if perfection, ultimate fulfillment would be waiting for me in that stage, but my heavily-churched heart knows not to say those words out loud.

I'm finding myself there again. Longing for a future stage, as if it will be the stage where I no longer complain, where I know exactly where my life is headed. As if that will be the stage where we will be financially stable and never be uncomfortable.

I asked God today why support raising has felt so hard recently (as if this was supposed to be easy?), and felt the strong sense that the impossibilities of this, the way it makes my heart shift uncomfortably in my chest, is actually His grace, keeping me not just leaning on Him, but actually holding fast to Him, feasting upon His promises as my source of strength and sustenance. I know my wayward heart would be quick to flee His ever-satisfying love if this process was weightlessly wonderful.

And it is His grace that sweetly and surely knocks me down, in order to gently remind me that grace is actually the only thing holding me up.

The moments I have waited for in the past have come. College is over. It was great, but far from perfect and much more sanctifying than thrilling. I am married to a wonderful, Godly man...which really just makes me see how selfish I am on a daily basis. He whisked me away to his hometown...which sounds like an adventure, but if it is...it is hidden among loneliness and quiet, early nights. We have found our dream job, which entails the grueling, glorious process of finding ministry partners that can fund our ministry. I am sick of longing for the future that will entail just as much sanctification and brokenness as it does now. Have I really not yet learned that circumstances don't bring joy?

I will still have to look to Him and plead for strength and hope, in every year of my life. I will still have to come before His throne and offer Him a sacrifice of thankfulness amidst unanswered questions and unknown futures. Uncertainty, complacency, discomfort, disillusionment, emotions, hopelessness, impossible decisions, broken hearts, they don't leave us. They never will.

And so I can rejoice that someday my heart will be there, unified and satisfied, perfect fulfillment in my Savior, who was my joy-giver all along. And in that, He will be most honored.

And I can rejoice that though these stretches and burdens, these unending waits, will inevitably just lead to more stretching, more brokenness, more waiting. But in those upheavals and hindrances, by His grace, we find our Savior. More trustworthy than we could have imagined, more wildly loving than we could have realized, more in control than we had ever given Him credit for. And much clearer than we ever thought we'd see on Earth.

And that is worth it.

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