In dwelling on His character, I began to see that no desire, no matter how sweet or noble, could stand in the place of my Savior. I am a slave to Christ, and therefore, no other master will do. Not motherhood, not marriage, not status, not notoriety. Even good things can become idols if they fight for center stage in our hearts.
The ache in your heart might be similar to mine. Or maybe it’s loneliness that streaks your face with tears. Or a broken relationship. Maybe the threat of financial troubles keeps you up at night with a litany of desperate prayers. Perhaps you long for healing more than anything else you can think of. The ache we feel may be valid and real, but it can also be a lens through which you see what your heart longs for the most: the Giver of the gifts rather than the gifts itself. The One we pray to, not the thing we pray for.
Take it from me, a woman who is both barren and a mother: when God doesn’t give you the desires of your heart, He may be giving you the desire of His heart. He may use the absence of the gift you pray for to set your eyes on the Giver instead. It will always be Him. Let your yearning turn you to the One your heart was made to yearn for. — Glenna Marshall
Why, When vs. Who?
If we can’t know the why of our waiting, we often move to when. We long to know that our waiting has a guaranteed expiration date. We can endure, we believe, if we just know when it will end.
The short answer is that there is a guaranteed end to our waiting or suffering, but it’s not for us to know when that day will be (Rev. 7:15–17; Matt. 24:36). One day, God will right all wrongs, bringing complete healing and restoration to our bodies and relationships. But eternity can feel like such a long way away, when we’re waiting today for a spouse, a child, a diagnosis or treatment, or a way to pay our bills. Perseverance only seems doable if we know how long we’ll need to exercise it.
But even if we had a date on the calendar, we’d still find a way to worry about it or try to speed things along. Waiting like that doesn’t cultivate trust in the God who cares for us and has ordered our steps. If we hinge our trust in God to a certain, earthly timeline, we’re not really trusting him. We’re trusting in our schedule.
After a decade of waiting, I finally quit asking when and why as I opened my Bible each day. I couldn’t bend the Scriptures to say something God hadn’t said, and I was weary of trying.
Instead, I began asking, “Who are you, God?” Over the next two years (while still waiting for my circumstances to change), I wrote down all the things I learned about God from Scripture each day. Stacks of spiral notebooks piled up, each page filled with notes about his character, kindness, love, mercy, grace — Glenna Marshall
Doors of Suffering
If God has ordained a door of suffering for you to walk through, you can trust he’s invested in both your perseverance and also your restoration (1 Pet. 5:10). You can step across the painful threshold knowing that the road beyond is incomparably short in light of the inheritance that has been bought and kept for you. We can tread the path knowing that Christ has suffered it first. - Glenna Marshall