“Just wait,”
“Well, wait a minute,”
“You can go next time, just wait,”
“You’ll have to wait till you’re bigger,”
“You’ll have to wait another 2 years before you can get a work permit,”
Waiting… and never receiving… trains your brain to do just that… waaaaiitt, waaaaiitt, wait. But then it becomes frozen in that exact spot, like staring out the kitchen screen door, with your nose pressed up against the glass.
It reminds me of a line from “It’s A Wonderful Life”, when ol’ George Bailey gives his speech to the Bailey Building & Loan Board of Directors and in it says,
“WAIT?!? Wait for what?”
I was always left waiting, left waiting behind, left waiting to ‘get bigger to go’, and I think the one that welded my brain neurons together when I was a kid, I was always waiting for my dad to come through on all the promises he made.
And so mentally and emotionally I am very much still that 11 year old kid with a broken heart, waiting for his dad to take him fishing.
It’s amazing to me we can go through life with these emotionally stunted brains.
Finally getting older; finally finding work; even starting a family. Imagine having kids and you have the emotional IQ of an 11 year old. Kids!!!
Shoulda went into being a professional poker player because I feel like I’ve just been bluffing my way through life.
The only thing I wanted to do as an adult was to be a good dad.
I didn’t focus on money; making it or managing it; I didn’t focus on a hobby like hunting or working on cars; and I didn’t focus on garnering specific tradesmen skills like building a house, or financing a house, that I could leverage throughout life.
I focused on being a dad for my kids.
And because I was severely conditioned to wait, I rationalized in my brain, that “I can wait till later to do those things” i.e. money; hobbies & skills because if there is one thing that I know I learned how to do is WAIT.
But now at my age, It’s becoming abundantly clear… that I waited too long.
And funny enough I find myself oddly coming full circle, and yet having not moved at all… I waited myself into the exact spot I started in… reminds me of a dog chasing his own tail kinda circle.
I still don’t know how to really do any of those things, those ‘adult’ things.
It’s weird… I can do ‘jobs’; I can ‘figure out’ how things work; and I have all manner of ‘adult responsibilities’ that others depend on me to take care of… but I feel like “I don’t really KNOW stuff”.
Especially ‘stuff’ about how God works.
Is waiting on God the same as waiting on my dad?
I learned the hard way what happens when you don’t wait for God, or straight up don’t listen to him.
Still paying for that obstinacy.
But even in that experience I was told, “You should just wait.” ( I know now I should’ve but I was just so frustrated at ALWAYS having to wait)
And it feels like, at some point somebody handed me a shovel and I just started digging myself a hole.
So how do we stop this merry-go-round, get in step with God, and instead of being stuck in place, we can actually take a positive, constructive, step forward???
Is it a point of focus? Focus on God and wait on Him?
Is it a point of focus on knowledge and skills? And having to pick one and start at the bottom.
Is it a focus on emotional, and mental health and wellbeing? Trying to fix a 50 year old problem with an 11 year olds understanding?
Trying to “fix yourself” while maintaining all those “adult responsibilities”.
Kinda heavy.
As I work my way through this particular patch of raspberries, I find myself going “old school” with trying to find some Godly understanding.
Billy Graham is old school.
(Insert YouTube video here)
As I listened to his video on… waiting
I started to see that I am actually, in a spiritual growth scenario, and basically I’m only 25 in ‘born again years’.
Because my earthly father did not take on his earthly duties to raise me up right there are a lot of years that the locust have eaten, to the point of where I never experienced a harvest, much less a bountiful harvest, so when it says, “it will be returned twice as much to you,” I get disgruntled because in my mind 2 times worth of nothing is still nothing… so even if I’m waiting on God… what am I waiting for?
A young man recently asked the age old question, “If you had to do it over again what would you change?”
I hate that question. It presumes I know stuff now. Which… I don’t think I do.
“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Proverbs 22:6
I believe God is growing me now. HE is my “abba” Father now.
It takes time to grow stuff and to grow it correctly so that it produces its appointed fruit.
Earthly waiting is not Godly waiting.
Looks like the same word… but they are not.
Earthly waiting has the looming shadow of “it might not happen” hanging around it, like dark summer storm clouds gathering on the horizon on a Little League Game Night.
Godly waiting is based on HIS promises. There is no way that it won’t happen. Our problem with Godly waiting is we sometimes misunderstand what it is we are waiting for, and so it may look different than what we are expecting.
And that’s the difference… expecting… when we are waiting on God it is with heightened anticipation and we are “expecting” it to happen.
God explains like a woman who is pregnant she knows that baby is coming one way or the other… in due time.
theemergingman.com 