Have A Little Faith in We

Waiting on God’s timing for an answered prayer, help in a difficult situation, a solution to your problem, or the end to a long season is hard. Our humanity is not patient by nature…. Then add in the fact that we are on our knees praying, our Bible’s pages are creased, and we are seeking God in our church building, through mass, by taking advantage of the sacraments…. Suddenly patience isn’t even difficult, it feels cruel. Right now I am in one of these chapters in life and I feel like trusting God’s answers and timing are turning into efforts of epic proportions for my mind, heart, and spirit.

The piece I do know about faith is the importance of effort and so I continue to find ways to feed my spirit. Sometimes it is spiritual music (anything from modern Christian to mass hymns) to new books, from You Tube homilies  to novenas and then back to tried and true podcasts. I am leaving nothing off the table.  And lately Lysa Terkeurst  story and work has resurfaced as a huge source of strength and comfort. The example of journeys she has walked and then how she shares about them in her books, interviews, and resources have given me the words I have been missing to describe my pain and also considerations for how to heal.

I suspect from this season, there will be many Faith Findings Posts to come from her wisdom – but today is a very specific line from this Fresh Life Church Podcast (Lysa’s words have been so helpful, I basically just did a search of all podcasts where she is featured and just listened-  no matter how old they were)(Link): “God is not to be tamed, but to be trusted.” We as humans want to dictate when God will answer…. How he will answer…. What he will answer… we want to control the situation, we want to tame Him. When the reality is we are called to trust and live through the wait with hope  and joy …. Because he is God and his plans are better than ours.

Even typing this quote and then saying “ we just have to wait” (that seems to somehow include that we wait with a simile on), feels like am lying, like I am contributing to people’s pressure in their lives to do the hard things well. But what I am also learning is that the hard is combatted by just doing these little steps that indicate trusting and slowly – but surely just taking the action, your mind and heart will start to follow. I started this post weeks ago (oh the MANY drafted posts I have right now…) and I was feeling really frustrated. Yet this last weekend, I had this wave of relief….. I really felt some peace…. I was 1000% present with my little girl and enjoyed a lot of family time. The voices in my head of “this is not supposed to be this way? Or where the heck is my own little family? Or Shannon deserves the things of my day dreams when she was just a poppy seed… not this messy life!” Those thoughts were silenced, when the circumstances have not changed in this hard season … in fact in some ways gotten even more murky. Yet I felt joy…. I felt a “this might be ok even though I can’t picture how it will end” – I felt faith alive…. I felt God’s direction of trust and patience, instead of the plethora of lies the devil and I like to toss around. The perfect reminder… God is not to be tamed but trusted. If peace can come in waves… I can wait for the full transformation.

Thank you so much for reading and remember to make it a great day!
Jackie