The Blessing of Waiting
Waiting is the hardest part.
Two weeks ago, as I shared my prayer request about the tumor found in my brain and the blood work to tell us whether or not it’s cancer that took 7-10 days, that was a common sentiment. A true sentiment. A sentiment that anyone who has ever had to wait for test results absolutely understands, am I right?
Waiting is, without question, the hardest part. The not knowing. How up in the air everything is. All the questions that you don’t have answers to–and all the questions you don’t even know yet to ask.
There are too many possibilities. Too many unknowns. Too many uncertainties.
I joked, during that week, that I had “Schrodinger’s tumor.” For those days of not-knowing, it both was and was not cancer. It both was and was not life-changing.
Waiting is hard. But you know what? As I sat in that uncertainty, as I explored both best and worst case scenarios–it could be nothing, it could change nothing…it could be cancer, it could dictate what I do for the rest of my life–I realized something that’s going to sound weird.
Waiting is such a blessing.
Have you ever studied how God talks about waiting in the Bible? It came up many years ago in a study we were doing with some friends, and though I’m too lazy right now to go look up the book, LOL, I remember a few specifics that stuck with me. Namely, that when God talks about waiting, He talks about it in terms of agriculture. We wait on God like a farmer waits for fields to rest or for seeds to sprout. We wait as for a harvest.
Our waiting isn’t meant to be just staring out at fallow ground or a frozen tundra where there’s no hope of life visiting the soil again. That’s not it at all. We wait with expectation. We wait knowing that God is at work. We wait trusting that there are things happening that we can’t see. And do you know what else we do when we wait?
We rest. We rest in Him.
My grandparents own a farm, and while I’ve never taken an active part in it, I certainly picked up on a few truths. Winter–that time of waiting–is a beloved time on a farm. Because it’s when you can sleep past dawn and come in before dusk. It’s when you don’t have to be out in the fields or manning the shed all day. It’s when you can travel. It’s when you can read. It’s when you can unwind and kick your feet up. The dormancy of a waiting period is what makes it precious.
But only if we choose it, right? If we spend those periods of waiting in high anxiety, we’re not going to emerge into the period of action in good condition. And obviously, we can’t always control our reactions to things. We get stressed. We get depressed. We get anxious. To a certain degree, we can take control of those reactions, but to a certain degree we can’t. Sometimes our bodies react in ways that we can’t consciously do much about.
Funny thing, though, in that recent period of waiting for me. I had other blood work done, too, to check up on my pituitary, since I do still have the benign tumor on it. My endo ordered a cortisol test, because it’s one of hormones the pituitary regulates. If the levels are too high or too low, that can indicate an issue with the gland–a physiological thing well beyond our control. But cortisol is the stress hormone, which means levels can also be high when you’re, well, stressed. As in, emotionally.
I took this test the day after my unexpected visit to oncology, when my doctors went through the two scenarios: (1) it could be nothing, in which case we cancel all the prep we’re about to do or (2) it could be Stage 4 cancer, and I’ll be on treatment for the rest of my life. I was one day into that 7-10 day waiting period on the liquid biopsy to tell me if I had cancer in my brain.
When the cortisol test results came back on Friday of that week, I reported to my husband, “The level was perfect! Toward the lower end of the normal range.” And he just stared at me and said, “Seriously? This week, and your stress hormone levels are normal? You are a freak of nature.”
I can’t argue with that! But I also kinda loved having the proof that my body agreed with me on being as okay as I kept insisting I was. 😉 Because here’s the thing–I don’t like waiting. But I needed it. I needed it to wrestle with what life means and what I’m doing with mine. I needed it to remember that I’m held in God’s mighty hand, safe and secure no matter what the result of a test. I needed it to work through possibilities.
I needed that time for God to work in me.
Every time a doctor has given me bad news, they’ve asked me the same question: “How are you feeling right now? What are your thoughts?”
I’ll admit it. In the moment, my answer is always, “I don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you on that.” LOL. I’m not an off-the-cuff feeler. I have to work through things. Digest them. I get this from my dad, and I bet I look just like he does as he digests information or news, sitting there with a thoughtful, quiet look on his face, perfectly content to say not a word as he processes. Yep. That’s me. Just let me process, then I’ll wrestle with the feelings.
Then they come. In my case, on that Monday when my endo said, “The scan found a tumor in your right cerebellum,” I walked out into the living room of the office where David was packing up books and I told him the news. He stood up, incredulity and fear on his face, and wrapped his arms around me. And I cried. I’m not usually a process-through-tears person, but this time, I cried. Several other times that day, I cried. I needed to.
Fields need to be watered, after all.
As I took a shower that afternoon, I let the sobs wrack me and I cried out to God, “I don’t want to do this again, Lord! I don’t!” I didn’t hear a still, small voice. I didn’t have to. As I dried off and got dressed again, I remembered a T-shirt I had as a teen that said, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future.” That saying just kept circling through my mind, and I grabbed hold of it.
And in the week that followed, I waited. I waited like a farmer as God prepared the soil of my life. I waited for answers, but it wasn’t a frozen, lifeless wait. It was a wait filled with prayer. It was a wait filled with community. It was a wait filled with reaching out in vulnerability and having encouragement and love poured over me.
And I felt…so…blessed. Blessed to be part of the Family of God. Blessed to know that literally thousands of people all around the world were praying for me. Blessed to know that whatever the answer, I am loved. I am chosen. I am worthy. I am a light-bearer. I am a Daughter of the King. I am equipped by Him to do the work He called me to do, in every moment I have to do it.
I worked through the scenarios, praying it would turn out to be good and not bad. Health and not cancer. And I knew that even if it was the worst, that wasn’t going to stop me.
Because I still have work to do. I still have stories to tell. I still have family to love and milestones to see. And above all–I still have His glory to help reflect upon the world.
And I realized, as I pondered the question of “What if I only have a few more years to live?” that that, too, is a blessing. Because first, we all only ever have “a few more years to live,” realistically speaking. Anything, at any moment, could be our end, and our lives are but a blip in the world anyway. But ignoring the very-true fact that “the end” is really “the beginning” of eternity with the Father, even that time that suddenly feels finite is a blessing. Because it’s a realization of what is ALWAYS true.
That we need to live each day with purpose. We need to treasure every hour. We need to dedicate each week, each month, each year we have left to Him, to what He wants us to do. We need to travel our paths with intentionality and a determination to show as much love to as many people as we possibly can.
This was the fruit of my waiting. Soaking up every email–and there were hundreds, friends, thank you–of encouragement and assurance and responding with heartfelt gratitude. Resting in a place of prayer and trust. Looking out at an always-uncertain future and seeing in that uncertainty the Lord at work in the soil. Basking in the silence of a still heart, a still mind, a still soul that is waiting for, waiting on Him.
Because the Lord will move. Seeds will unfurl their first sprouts and shove up through that soil. Springtime will come, and summer, and harvest. These periods of waiting aren’t for nothing. They’re for preparing us. Preparing us for the next season of work for Him.
Wait with expectation, my friends. Because He has good, good things in store, no matter what news we receive. He is there in the tempest. He is there in the fire. He is there in the earthquake. And He is there in the whisper.
Wait on Him, with Him, in Him. And then there is blessing inside the waiting.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.