God Finishes

Have you ever been stuck in a season of waiting? 

You have prayed the prayers, you have put in the work, you continue to wake up every day and do your due diligence, but you're still waiting. You're waiting for the door to open. You're waiting on the darkness to break. You're waiting on the goodness to come. You're waiting on the promise of God to come true in your life, the promise that you're so sure of. 

I think the hardest waiting for us is something we could call "active waiting" - the kind of waiting you're doing when you're working for it. 

Seven months ago, I undertook a course of physical therapy designed to help break some chains that have fallen heavy on my shoulders. In that time, I have made a great amount of progress, but I'm still not where I want to be. My physical therapist told me that the entire process, to get me to my goals, would likely take 8-12 months. Eight. to. twelve. months. 

I have to be honest - the more progress I make, the harder it is to continue to wait. The more things I find that I am able to do that I wasn't able to do before, the easier it is for me to start believing that this is as good as it gets, that this is as far as I'm going to come. I try to keep that eight to twelve month timeline in my mind, but here I am at month seven, and...it's hard to believe it's still coming. 

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with one of my doctors about getting off one of my medications, a drug I have been taking for almost two decades. Know what he told me? It sounds like a good idea, but I won't know for eighteen months how it will really affect me. Whether it will be good or not. Whether my body will accept life without it. Eighteen months. 

What in the world am I supposed to do for eighteen months? 

These are just a couple of examples from my current life, but we could keep going. I remember the seasons when I was desperate for a job, any job...and the ones when I was aching for a job more closely related to my heart. I've been waiting on my future husband for decades, and the longing in my heart to have children of my own has not yet been fulfilled. 

I know folks who are waiting on their finances to steady out, their sense of belonging to increase, their health to stabilize, their weight to drop, their kids to grow up, their grandkids to be born, their parents to settle into a new season, their homes to be finished, their cars to be upgraded, their churches to blossom, their chains to break, their habits to form...we could go on and on. 

And in these seasons of waiting, these agonizing seasons of waiting, we really only have one truth to hold onto - a truth that has become so oft-repeated that it's almost cliche, but it truly is our lifeline: 

That the God who began a good work in us will most assuredly complete it (Philippians 1:6). 

That's it. That's all we've got. On the hard days, on the dark days, on the days that feel like the last days, when we are ready to give up, ready to give in, ready to roll over, the only thing we truly have is the deep, abiding knowledge that God loves us and...He's working on it. He's still working on it. He's putting the pieces in place one infinitesimally small piece of dust at a time and still working us toward that good thing that our hearts already know is happening...if only we can wait until it gets here. 

And so, we keep waiting. But not as those without hope, for we know that the outcome is certain - something good is coming. Because good is all that God does. Whether it looks like what we think it should look like, turns out the way we want it to, or comes in our own timeline or not, it's gonna be good. And it's gonna be finished. 

Thank you, Lord.