Waiting.

Sarah laughed at God’s word.
She couldn’t believe what she had just heard.
A baby in her belly after all these years…
I am not ninety years old
but I walk around like there’s nothing left to unfold.
Close the book, it’s over on this story.
But I’m starting to believe.
There’s faith where there was none before
and hope where there had been despair
and confidence that seems to come from nowhere.
God will do what He said He will do.
God will do what He said…
I’m starting to believe.
-Starting to Believe, Jenny Youngman

Last year on my birthday, I felt the first pangs of my age getting away from me. I think everyone has that internal map, something like a checklist to occasionally consult. Some take stock on a birthday or anniversary or the beginning of a new year. Until last year, I hadn’t done much of that. But there it was and in a few weeks will come again.

I think of family – my parents and my brother. My grandfathers who are dead now and my grandmothers who aren’t. I think of the family I want, the children I hope I’ll have, the husband I hope I’ll love. I wonder when those things will happen and why they seem so far away when I want so desperately to find them.

It’s no secret from those who know me well that I want a large family. Five children sounds beautiful to me. A family that knows and loves each other. A home where a life with God is known and loved and lived out. I reject the thought that this is too idealistic and although I understand women—usually mothers—who gently laugh at me, I am holding on to this dream. Yet I have come through another year and still don’t see the page turning. I remain in this chapter of life, shrugging off feelings of disappointment.

I’ve seen the movies of the almost-forty woman finding at long last the love of her life and think: God, please don’t let that be me. Yet in it’s way there is a quiet beauty there. And still, I think of my father’s mother, finding love at eighty and think: God, please don’t let that be me. Yet I sang and prayed and cried at her wedding. 

And I don’t feel sad or desperate or alone so much as I feel like I’m waiting.

It seems much of our lives are spent waiting. Waiting for the next job or relationship or adventure. Or even the next fight or disappointment or pain. It makes me a bit sad that we spend so much time waiting when life is happening in the midst of these things. For some reason we must always be on the brink of something. The brink of a new discovery. Something just around the corner. A finish line just ahead. But what of the now?

A very wise friend of mine once told me she felt a little, tiny prick of heartbreak when she became engaged to the man now her husband. She had a strong faith at a time when I had little and she explained that her faith led her to believe that once united as a couple, a unit, she and her husband would share an intertwined relationship with God. It would no longer be her alone with God, but them. An us. Being in love with love, this seemed beautiful to me and of course it is beautiful. But for her, that new beginning was also an ending.

Though I’m sure she has no idea, her insight has stayed with me for many years. This is a time to treasure and grow and come to know God as only I can right now. The truths I find are mine, small pieces of clarity and joy that are between this one single young woman and her God, her Creator, who loves her beyond all understanding.

So just as God loves me—whom He dreamed up and loved before I ever saw life—I will keep my own dreams of love and life and family. And I will keep waiting, but with thankfulness that God will guide and protect my heart. I am His and He is mine, for life’s best and its worst. When I fall and when I rise up. In moments of richness and times of poverty. Until my death and through all things. I will keep living and loving and waiting.