Thursday, August 22, 2013

The Girl Who Waited

The Girl Who Waited
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.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[ii]

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.

“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.”[iii]
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.

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