In the Waiting Room, still.

"Oh restless heart-beating against the prison bars of your circumstances and longing for a wider realm of usefulness-allow God to direct all your days. Patience and trust, even in the midst of the monotony of your daily routine, will be the best preparation to courageously handle the stress and strain of a greater opportunity, which God may someday send."

This was the final paragraph in my devotional on March 17th, and it definitely hit home. I was sharing this the other day with a dear friend of mine. I won't speak for her but I feel this paragraph's emotion with every day that goes by in my present circumstance. I hate being restless and being told to have patience. And the constant waiting for something to happen has got me at my wit's end. But here I am, in the waiting room, waiting, waiting, waiting.

The theme of the past 7 months since returning from Korea has been, "to wait." Have I done it without complaining, nope. Have I done it with great and excited expectation in what is to come, absolutely not. Have I been obedient to the Lord and been a willing participant in His divine plan for my life, I am sorry to say I have not.

I try to convince myself that God's timing is perfect. That He is preparing a way for me that will be beyond my expectations. I have tried to be an encouragement to others that are going through the same predicament while on the inside I have been so impatient and dealing with a bad internal attitude. And the branches of my inner turmoil can be described by the following: my heart is starting to wrestle with my mind and override my logic. 

The same friend I spoke of above suggested that I read chapters 6, 7, and 8 in Romans. As I was reading through these passages my soul began to resonate. I can identify with the raging storm that was going through dear Paul's entire body. Why, because I was dealing with the same battle, am still fighting through the same battle, and will continue to do so until I reach some sort of breakthrough.

To say that I am frustrated would be a sorry understatement. There are times where I feel like I am beating my head against a brick wall as I continue to struggle with the wait. Where is my joy? Where is my peace? Where can I find solace? I try to muster up as much faith as I can to keep on marching forward but I always manage to come up short. I fall into old habits and find myself trudging through the mud of sin, sometimes the tar of sin, only to find myself dirty, sticky, and tired.

The answer to my questions is simple, I must continue to struggle. I am supposed to wrestle with this problem, probably for the rest of my life. It may come in a different package, but trials make me stronger and it develops my character. And these trials will continue to come as long as I hold onto God. Allow me to share the following visual:  A friend of mine once described trials in regards to those role playing video-games that many, including myself, enjoy. The first enemy in these games that you come across are always goblins. When you first face them, it takes many hits to defeat them because your skill level is like on level 1. You hit the goblin, the goblin hits you back, and it goes on and on for several returns. Eventually throughout the game your skill level goes up so that when you go back and have to face that same goblin, or his little video-game kin, you manage to whip his little digital butt with one hit.

It's like that in life as well. When we first face a trial or tribulation, it poses quite the daunting task. We swipe at it constantly until it is eventually put to rest. While later on in life when the same trial presents itself, we are better equipped to handle the dilemma and make short work of it.

So here I am in the Waiting Room. I am trying to muster up what little faith I still have left to me after internally beating myself up over my mistakes. I am doing my best to cling onto the hope that I have because I know somewhere deep within my core that God Will Come Through. Where is my proof? Well my proof is that He has never, ever let me down before. As many times as I have fallen I have always gotten back up. I did not do that on my own. There is no way I could be here today if it weren't for His hand in my life. Sometimes God's plans are difficult, but those difficulties produce the best fruit.

And here's the irony: Lord God, thank You for this suffering. Thank You, because despite my kicking and screaming, You are here with me now. And You do have something far better for me than anything that I could ever imagine.