The Girl Who Waited
by the Girl
by the Girl
There
once was a girl who waited. She waited to go to bed until she could hardly keep
her eyes open. She waited to get up each morning until it was an absolute
necessity. She would wait to leave the house until the very last minute.
The
friends of this girl began to expect such behavior. As much as she tried, the girl could not
change her patterns. The girl was a procrastinator.
One day,
during a fit of waiting to avoid doing one thing or another, the girl came upon
a sentence that hit her square in the gut.
It read, “…procrastination is just fear in fancy clothes.”[i]
The
thing of it is, she had been a procrastinator all her life. She waited to get her chores done. She waited
to do her homework until the very last second. Even as an adult, her
procrastination cost her precious time and energy.
She knew
she was avoiding something important in all this waiting. She was avoiding some of the deep heart-level
issues that really just boiled down to fear.
This
thought used to surprise her. She had
never thought of herself as a fear-driven person. She had always considered herself pretty
level-headed; lacking much of the anxiety she had seen in the lives of
others.
She had
been wrong.
Her fear
and her worries had just been carefully hidden. She kept them tidy and covered
in nice packaging with a pretty little bow.
It is possible she was afraid of her fears. She was afraid they would take over. She was afraid others would see them. This girl was accustomed to her fears being
kept inside while she could put on the face of peace and calm that others had
come to expect and need of her.
In moments
of honesty and insight the girl could see the truth. She could see what she had been waiting to
see. She began to see that her fears were secret lies that had been toxic to
her very soul.
She had
believed the lies that she wasn’t enough on her own. She believed that she needed to keep her true
self hidden from those around her. She believed
the lies that told her to fear failure. Likewise,
she admitted she was also afraid to really succeed.
What
was all of this about? What could be
done about it?
The girl
knew she needed to seek something true. Something solid. Something
timeless. Some One who was beyond all
time.
It was
that simple.
She needed
the Creator of her soul to meet her in deep and significant ways. Her heart needed the Living Water of His
truth to squelch the fiery darts of fear and half-truths.
She needed
a different kind of waiting.
Waiting
for the Lord was wholly different than the kind of waiting she often fell
into. Holy waiting is restful, peaceful,
and full of expectation. Fearful waiting
is avoidance of something that seems much bigger than its reality.
The
girl found that Holy waiting was an opening of her heart before the One who
created its depths. She soon found that
by exposing her heart the fear began to be released as His loving presence
filled each wound that had been cut by lies.
Holy
waiting was what she longed for. It was
in those moments that she discovered more of her true self, free from fear. The
one that He created in the beginning of time.
There once
was a girl who waited. And her waiting
was good.
