Everyone's Waiting

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I waited five years to finish college so I could get on with my real life. A few years ago, it seemed all I was waiting for was the perfect girl. You know, the one who "gets it." She is beautiful, yet humble. She knows she has great value, but she's never better than the needs of the single mother in the local mission. Today, I wait for a phone call telling me it's time to start a new career. For months I waited for people to stop asking: "Do you have a teaching job yet?" For many restless nights I tried to understand why I have no desire to teach, thinking there must be a logical answer. Instead, I received peace from God on my decision, without the clear answers everyone else wants to hear.

When I weighed five pounds, was bald and had only gums to chew with, I waited on food and on human touch. When I was a teenager, I waited for someone to tell me what to do with my life. I waited for someone to tell me it's alright to love the world so much that it literally hurts to see people fall to pieces. No one ever told me it was alright, and it still hurts like hell.

To this day, I wait on God to show His face. I wait for the revelation which will remove all doubt. Hope is the painful sacrifice of what seems to make sense, and faith is a heavy burden. Yet, that is all I have until I leave this world and see Christ looking into my gray eyes, calling me His most beloved.

Sometimes, waiting for one day to end and the next to begin feels like getting a second chance. Other times, it feels like waiting to die. For my whole life I have waited for someone to tell me the value of my life. When I have been told, I've waited on myself to believe it.

I wait for the right chance to tell my grandmother that I love her before she dies. I want to tell her that I love her for having a part in shaping my mother, who has shaped me. I wait to understand why the men in my family can never use the word "love" unless we really mean it. I wait to understand why we can't mean it more often. My soul wants to love God's people until there is nothing left of me. Even as a child, I knew God had placed an uncommon pain in me. It is a pain I feel for every fractured heart. It is impossible to understand, but it is as real as my sin. Yet, my surface insecurities hold me back from even extending a comforting word to a hurting stranger.

I wait to stop living in my head. I wait to discover what it means to live life as my Creator intended. I wait to lose myself. I want God to hold my crippled body as I crawl for a few more days, as I wait to begin living. I want God to grab my throat and choke out whatever is left of this hollow human shell. I will not wait to see God. I must feel Him in this house, in this room, in my bones. My Father has waited on me for far too long.