Waiting

   Not long ago, I wrote the following paragraph as a status on Facebook. I shared it to, yes, be honest and vulnerable, but also because I felt like there was another young woman who might possibly be encouraged to know she wasn't alone. Since then, my best friend gave me a quote that I think is a perfect ending to my status and really describes how I feel about waiting (which is way more than just waiting for marriage). 

    Every once in a great while, I feel the temptation to wonder what other people think of me being a daughter at home. Realizing for a 20+ year old to still be at home and not working outside the home (other than a volunteer job) is not quite the "norm" any more. It is sometimes easy for me to feel a bit insecure of what I think someone's possible perception of me could be. Such as - Do they think I'm lazy? Why aren't I in college preparing for plan B? Do they think I'm oblivious to what goes on in the world around me? Do they think that I'm weird for choosing to allow God to write my love story? - When, at times, I begin to feel this way, I am thankful for a God Who is faithful to remind me that it is HIS thoughts of me I should be concerned about, not the world's. It is very humbling that the Lord would choose to use me in any capacity, great or small. And as I sit here watching Thomas The Train with my little brothers, I am reminded that I am exactly where He wants me to be.

The following is the quote/excerpt from my friend. It is by G. Campbell Morgan. I found it to be so encouraging! I hope you do too.

   Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given....Waiting for God, then, is the adjustment of our lives to the truth concerning Him which we know. . . . God is the one unchanging fact from everlasting to everlasting. Waiting for God means putting this life, of which I am so uncertain in a thousand varied ways, into right relationship with Him of whom I am absolutely and everlastingly certain. Waiting for God means that I adjust my life to Him rather than to circumstances, and that I set my hope on Him rather than on the wit and the cleverness of men. Waiting for God means that definite personal activity which is busily occupied in adjusting the whole fact and circumstances of life to the unchangeable and unalterable fact of God....Waiting on God means power to do nothing save under command. This is not the lack of power to do anything. Waiting for God needs strength rather than weakness. It is power to do nothing. It is the strength that holds strength in check. It is the strength that prevents the blundering activity which is entirely false and will make true activity impossible when the definite command comes.....Waiting requires strength. It demands absolute surrender of the life to God, the confession that we are at the end of our own understanding of things, the confession that we really do not see our way and do not know the way. The waiting that says: "Until God shall speak we dare not move and will not move, we will not be seduced from our resolution to wait".

- G. Campbell Morgan (From his sermon ' Secret to Waiting on God')  

I won't write anymore, because I feel like everything speaks for itself. I hope in whatever waiting circumstance you are in, that you were encouraged by this today!