Wouldn't it be like Him

whispers in the waiting

Teens file into the room laughing and sweaty. We’ve just begun our Christmas Cup competition with ugly Christmas sweaters and minute-to-win-it games. Typically, we all fall onto couches and bean bags. Tonight, though, four of the leaders find a chair at the front of the room as Gio settles on a stool at the end of the line.

This week’s topic: God’s perfect timing.

Gio opens his phone to the list of questions written there and looks over at us. Each of us have agreed to sit here and share with our teens. Each of us carries a different story of waiting, seeing and knowing God’s goodness, and still waiting now.

“Okay, let’s kick this off…”

If this were a movie, the montage would begin right now. And this song would play in the background.

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Thought I had You figured out
So sure I knew exactly how You'd move
Thought my Savior was coming with a sword in His hand
To my surprise, He came as a child

I’m fidgeting with my festive cardigan as we step into a stranger’s beautifully decorated home. Between dinner and the white elephant gift exchange, I desperately search for my place while trying not to overheat.

We’ve been in Ohio just a few months and I don’t know most of this group well enough to explain it all. But I finally tell one trusted woman that my new medication has me hot and bothered and she kindly pats my arm and encourages me to just set the sweater aside and breathe.

Everything about everything is tender and raw. My hormones, my body temperature, my ability to cry at the drop of a hat. I can barely keep my eyes open for the five days I’m taking this medication.

The only thing that gets me through is the hope that next Christmas will look different. It’s the only thought that makes every single side effect worth it.

All season long, Gio and I both hold that hope alongside the unwavering hope we have in God’s goodness. When we shut our eyes and join hands, we can hear the faint whisper of our kind Father: I am withholding no good thing from you.

And so we keep on.

And wouldn't it be like You
To be different than we thought, different than we want
But better, You're better

As I pull out of the parking lot, I call my Mom. She’s always my second call after an appointment. I report the relatively good news, processing aloud the reality that we’re doing this again, almost a year later.

This time though, I’m trying a new medication with no awful side effects. That was my one requirement since now we have a six-month-old baby girl in our care and I can’t be non-functioning for six days a month.

We wonder at the timing of it all. Had the medication worked last year, like we so desperately hoped - we wouldn’t know her. We may not even be licensed foster parents right now.

I’ll never know what that fork in the road could have led to because it isn’t where our story headed. What I do know, as I make the 30 minute drive home, is that there’s a toothy grin and chubby cheeks waiting for me. I know, without a doubt, that we were meant to be part of each other’s story.

In 2019, a small and unassuming thought crossed my mind.

You’ll foster first.

The whisper came and went so quickly, a fact I gladly used to justify my quick dismissal. At the time, the longing for biological children was new and aggressive and the thought that God might make us wait because we had to foster first felt cruel.

Five years later, I remember. I picture baby girl’s face and warmth spreads through my body; a knowing settles deep within me.

We did foster first and it wasn’t a punishment or cruel withholding.

She was always meant to be our first.

They left my Savior in a tomb
Hope was lost and the doubt was breaking through
When You brokе the bread, I saw the holеs in Your hands
How did I not see? Son of God yet Son of Man

I wrap my brother’s Christmas gifts in plaid red and green paper.

I’ve had these items favorited on Etsy for years.

Of course, I always assumed I would gift them to my brothers when we had news for them. I imagined this being our announcement that they were becoming uncles.

It didn’t happen at all like we thought it would, but they are uncles. They are the sweetest, most attentive uncles to baby girl. They’ve taken a page out of my Mom’s book and loved her without reserve, as if she were always ours.

My middle brother was actually the first one to make her belly laugh. Tears ran down our faces because it was a sound we’d never heard before - it was a sweeter than honey kind of sound.

I can’t wait to give them their gifts on Christmas.

I also can’t help but consider the plan that I had for us and the way I wanted things to go. I hope my brothers receive these gifts along with the hard fought for truth that it will be okay.

Even if nothing turns out how they wanted it to, it will be okay. There will be joy and there will be Jesus.

We are proof of that. Baby girl is proof of that.

God’s faithfulness is so much bigger and wider than I knew before.

So help me be like Mary
Laid down, pouring out
And I won't miss You in a crowd
'Cause I love Your voice
And I know the sound

//

“Looking back, what is one thing you wish you could have known, or believed, that would have helped in your time of waiting?”

Gio asks us the last question on his list.

I’m amazed at how well a room full of teenagers have listened to us share our stories. Every single one of them is watching us and I just want to know what’s inside their heads.

As I take in each of their faces, I realize that I have the opportunity to speak about something that no one spoke to me about 10 years ago. Specifically, infertility, but also a much broader truth.

I entered into this season naively, entitled, and frustrated with God. I didn’t understand why He would say no and the waiting made me restless.

Praise Him that it did.

The restlessness settled in my limbs the way growing pains do and I couldn’t stop squirming. I squirmed my way through bitterness, resentment, and the pursuit of other dreams. I tried to quell the restlessness a million different ways until I realized that I’d never be settled until I was resting in the presence of God - every single day.

His kindness allowed my uncomfortability until I found I was most comfortable with Him. The pursuit of Him has shaped who I am.

That’s what I share with our teens as we end the night.

“There is no more worthwhile pursuit than the pursuit of our God. Even the fulfillment of your greatest, wildest dreams will never satisfy you like He will.”

Wouldn’t it be just like Him to do it differently than we thought or wanted?

Wouldn’t it be just like Him to do it better and richer than we ever dreamed He could?

It would be just like Him to whisper in the waiting, I am not withholding any good thing from you. I love you, beloved.

I want it to be just like me to listen when He does.

This photo is for the ones who have been around since the days of Sincerely, Beloved on Instagram. I shared photos of the sunbeams in our New York apartment regularly, because they reminded me of God’s new mercies and His grace for today every single time.

Last week, I took this photo and gloried in it.

Sunbeams, mercies, manna - over and over and over.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Whisper."

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