A reflection.

When I decided to start writing new epiphanies, I really wanted to spend time in prayer asking God for a theme each month. But honestly, this month I didn’t even reach that stage. I just began to write and knew that Jesus was asking me to ponder, to sit with this idea of waiting.

It’s funny because at the end of this month I turn 30 – something I’ve been preparing for, waiting for almost all year. Making plans, setting goals, praying to see the goodness of God’s plan for me. But the sense of waiting I have now is something totally different, something much more interior… something more uncomfortable and transformative, if only I am to let Jesus in. So, I’ve started to sit with it. This waiting. Treading in the discomfort of not knowing what I’ll get, but learning to surrender to the beauty of that.

A lot of my life I felt like waiting was agony. Almost like it was a period of time spent preparing to be let down. But Jesus calls out something different to me today. A message resounding in hope, and truth, and awe-struck aching. He tells me I can wait and it doesn’t need to be marked by pain. I can wait and it won’t always end in disappointment. I can wait and it doesn’t need to be filled with anxiety. I can wait, filling that space with both hope and surrender. Maybe it’s waiting for a friend to see their goodness, or for that family member to get sober, for the healing of a feeling of shame you’ve carried in silence, or for Jesus to fulfill that deep desire within your heart. Regardless of what it is, we all know that heaviness of keeping watch, and trusting that if we receive it or not, our Lord takes care of everything.

So, I pray that as we begin this very specific journey together that we can also take rest in the anticipation. Submitting to the fact that we may not necessarily see the whole picture, or know if what we desire is a part of making us saints, but Jesus wants to meet us there. He does not abandon, nor count the ways in which we’ve abandoned Him. He just wants us to keep company with Him, so we can fix our eyes on He who makes all things good.