Thursday, October 16th: What Are You Waiting For?

I was the kid that “wanted to be older,” wanted to get to the next step — leaning in to the adult conversations long before I was really invited. Living for Fridays, or the end of a semester, a year, a season. Looking forward to the “what’s ahead,” and when those moments came, I had such a hard time settling in, relishing in the moment, soaking in the greatness of today. The letdown was rough after an exciting moment or time. The normal, the mundane, the everyday Tuesday morning of nothing was hard for me to enjoy, embrace, or even just settle into. This is such a downer — looks like I have not enjoyed so much of my life (this is really not true, but for the sake of the lesson I have learned… kinda).

Adulthood just pronounced it differently. I remember my husband (and the rest of the world) telling me one night after the “90 minute +” bedtime routine with my two kids under the age of 2, “You should just enjoy this; it will not always be.” And as a mom, you hear that over and over again. So begins the tug-of-war that is riddled with “mom guilt.” Such a tension that my analytical/emotional/high-strung/performance-seeking/need-to-be-productive brain has lived in for most of my entire life. Tack on the guilt of “missing the little moments” with my kids, and it is just a “hot mess” of a juggle.

So what does all of that have to do with today? Here I am again — and maybe this makes sense to the onlooker — but gosh, I wish this cancer diagnosis was over. I wish the rearview mirror was what we were looking into instead of the distant and unknown future of what lies ahead. But I feel the beckoning from the Lord to settle in to this process, to today, to the waiting and the unknown — the mundane Wednesday with nothing on the calendar but waiting.

Even this process of navigating treatment for this diagnosis includes so much waiting… waiting for test results, waiting for doctors’ appointments, waiting for scheduling conflicts, or even “waiting for side effects” — literally waiting to get sick — waiting for the next treatment, ready to be done with all six, ready to get this port out, ready to get surgery over with. You know, the waiting and the process is hard on me. But what is it that the Lord is inviting me to in this?

I have heard it said over and over the past month and truly believe it to my core — this process for me and for my family is much more than navigating a cancer diagnosis and coming out on the other side with a testimony of the Lord’s faithfulness. It is much more about the journey of getting there and the change that is inevitable to happen inside of us. This change that shifts the core of who we are in a way that leaves us “not the same.” It is that process that feels more imminent and even more important than the surface challenges that we are staring in the face. What is happening at a deeper level?

For today, that challenge in me is to slow down, even sit, rest, be silent and still in the moment. Lean in to the process. Lean in to the unknown and the questions, even the “what ifs,” and let that process simmer. Don’t wish it away, because it is this process that is changing me. It is this process that is purifying the things that “I didn’t even know needed to be purified.” It is this process that is “undoing” the pretty bow that we thought we had tied around our lives and allowing the Lord to turn over each stone and point out things that we didn’t know existed — all for the purpose of becoming more like Him.

A little less of me and a little more of Him each day is not a rushed process, not a hurried life, not even a “productive as I would like to quantify it” life, but rather quite the opposite. Today is the day we have been waiting for!

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

— Psalm 46:10