I’ve waited on a lot of things in my life. And each time I grew impatient in the waiting I would say something like “I’d be ok with the waiting as long as I could know it was all going to work out”. I wanted assurance it was going to be OK.

I remember in my late 20’s I started to say to God “I want to be married. It doesn’t have to be now, I just want to know it’s going to happen”. I didn’t get married until several years later. I wanted to know what was going to happen, years before anything ever actually happened.

But the truth is, what was going to happen was a bumpy road to marriage. I lost a friend in the process of gaining my husband. If I had known the pain ahead in order to find the joy, I might have doubted God’s plan. I might have rejected what was to come.

Waiting allows us to prepare for the unknown. It creates a yearning for what’s to come even when we must move through pain and disappointment to get there. Waiting forces us to trust God over ourselves.