The Discipline of Waiting (or, When You Feel Stuck)

I had rather assumed, once I graduated from undergrad, that my life would follow a fairly neat and predictable pattern: I would enter a Virginia Baptist seminary to earn my Masters in Divinity; I would rent a room from a sweet widow in my local church for a dirt-cheap monthly rate; I would continue attending Colonial Baptist Church every time the doors were open; I'd begin paying back my student loans promptly every month; and I would find a staff position at my alma mater as many of my friends did.

Of course, God had decided before the foundation of the world to have other plans in mind (except, for some reason, the student loans).

The first shock was being denied admittance to seminary. I have never been told why, though I wrote the dean a very gracious email inquiring. (He replied answering only one part of my initial request, on which he spent the bulk of his terse email. Very conveniently for him, my pointed question of why I was not admitted was not addressed…other than informing me the counseling ministry at my local church would be able to help, which then led to the questions of who else knew about this, and how much, and why.)

The second was when my job at college fell through. A student who had formerly worked in that department was picked over me. Multiply this out by numerous other applications ignored and rejected over the last months.

As the summer progressed, the Lord treated me to discovering just how flawed most of my friends could be: Texts went unanswered, prayer needs were redefined or glossed over, emails and Facebook messages were ignored, and, for most of them, I was put on the back burner of priority, seeing as I was no longer physically present. I shared some very personal issues with two at the beginning of the summer; one began ignoring all of my texts and told me he would call me by phone, then never did; the other seemed initially very warm and gracious then also stopped responding (and ignored my Facebook message asking him why). I can name at least four or five others who have begun behaving similarly, all within the same time frame.

The most painful of all of this was one of my two closest friends from college abandoned me without warning or explanation. Since the spring semester of my senior year, I had noticed him pulling further and further away from me (which he denied…denied having a problem, denied changing the boundaries, and so on ad nauseum). He became irritable, uncorrectable, defensive, short. Blame-shifting and evading responsibility were his new hobbies. By the time I graduated and moved out-of-state, I was functionally dead to him. That this pushed me into a deep depression did not matter to him; what mattered to him is that I would not let him simply walk away from me without explanation. I have attempted to talk with him further and have been resisted, fought against, blamed, and most often simply, maddeningly ignored. I wrote him a nine-page letter in December explaining in detail what he had done to me, that I was confused given his profuse declarations of devotion and loyalty and desire for my friendship...that he was sinning by rejecting me and lying about it, and that he needed to repent. I even used Scripture -- a list of fifteen or sixteen verses he was violating. He finally wrote me an email last month – after a year of denying he ever had a problem – which ignored essentially my entire letter. He rattled off a list of awful character traits that he never before mentioned, explaining that since I was "not willing, not interested, and not open" to change “as the school year went on” he amended the necessary boundaries (he had never told me any of these issues until this email, or before that had not even admitted he had a problem or that he was pulling away). This is after a year of telling me he hadn't changed the boundaries, implying it was in my head - that I was crazy or foolish for thinking he had. He has refused my attempts to talk further, even though he admitted he should have been more direct.

To complicate things, my parents and I have had an extremely difficult time getting along since I have been home. They are divorced, and I live at home with my mother. Neither are believers. Certainly I have had many good experiences and many good memories with them; but the last nine months have been extremely challenging and painful. I have never had a good relationship with them, but of late it has been even worse. Of particular conflict with my mom is my faith. She professes to be a believer but is so resistant to God’s Word and so lethargic and paralyzed spiritually – always opting for unbelief, questioning, and the like – that it becomes impossible to have fellowship with her or help her understand spiritual things. I see her struggling spiritually, and mourning the remnant of a lost faith at an extremely emotionally and circumstantially challenging stage of life, but she refuses help from God’s Word and then wonders why her circumstances (or at least how she perceives and feels about them) do not change.

Church has been one of the only bright spots in the last several months, but even here there are difficulties. I have made wonderful friends but most of them have zero understanding of how brutally alone I feel, sometimes offering pat answers to my desperate pleas for help that – while well-intentioned – evidence a lack of understanding of me and where I am. Several who are aware of my long-standing issues with my mother and my best friend from college seem content to almost dismiss the very clear violations of Scripture on their ends and focus on what I am doing wrong (real or imagined), as though my mom’s and friend’s sins should not matter or negatively affect me. Some of the men in particular have been very content to attempt to “fix” everything, instead of obeying the command to weep with those who weep, and seem to think I am merely complaining or whining. One of them has begun pressuring me to find work  with 2 Thessalonians 3:10-11 – as though I have not been applying to jobs for months and coming up with rejection after rejection; as though it is my fault; as though my efforts thus far have not been good enough; as though I am sinning and lazy. As though I want to be home all day with nothing to do.

I am attempting to save money for my own car and to eventually move out, but until I find a job that will be slow going. Besides, most of that money has to go towards loans.

Needless to say, I more often than not end up feeling more than a little claustrophobic and trapped.

Stuck.

Desperately wishing for things to be different, peaceful, fruitful, flourishing. Not perfect. Not without the little annoyances and fumbles of frail people living within a fallen world. Just not with all the major, ongoing, all-at-once, big-and-small issues that have been piling on since May and especially over the last six months.

And I haven’t shared everything.

I do not expose myself in this way to pursue victimhood, or accolades for how awful my martyrdom is. I am no stranger to suffering, and to be quite honest I have been through worse. I have thrown my weight on the promises of God many times before and they have always held me up. I trust this time will be no different. I share merely to paint a picture of the very difficult circumstances the Lord has seen fit to place me.

So, what to do?

I have been meaning to update this blog for a while, and the last week I have simply been blindsided with exhaustion and hurt. That pushed thoughts of writing a blog completely to the outskirts of my thinking (considering it more of a priority and accomplishment to simply get out of bed and finish my daily chores without bursting into tears, or feeling crippling emotional pain).

Today, however, while smoothing out the template and doing some other reading online, I decided to blog about what the Lord is teaching me during this season of waiting. How I am growing, what I am seeing within me that needs to change, and the fruit of His work – small and slow though it be at times – as I yield to Him in submission to both His sovereign and moral wills.

Beloved, the Lord only puts is in the places most conducive to the work He desires to do in our lives – to prune us of sin and unbelief, to make a home for His life-giving Word in our hearts, to reveal in us what He wishes to uproot, to teach us to long for Heaven, and a thousand other things. Because the end-goal is complete likeness to Christ, we can bless the means as a sovereignly-appointed kiss from our Father…to draw out our hearts after Him in faith, abandon and surrender.

I know in my head that His way is always best.

This blog will hopefully become a testimony to that becoming a reality in my heart and, eventually, with my eyes.