I’m glad this content of today’s devo came today and not yesterday: if it had come yesterday I may well have ripped the book to shreds. You see, I’m waiting for something that shows no sign of changing or ever being different to what it is right now. And yesterday, I was soooo over waiting. It wasn’t as much the waiting either (although patience is not my strongest character strength to say the least), it was the wondering if the waiting would ever deliver something good. I mean, I could sit in my bedroom waiting to be discovered as the next prima ballerina, and be the absolute model of patience, but it’s extremely unlikely that dream would ever be satisfied well.

Am I waiting for something that will actually happen? I asked myself yesterday. What is the point in waiting? Honestly, I was so upset with no nowhere to express it, I thought I might compress into a spot of infinite darkness like a star when it collapses into a black hole. Melodramatic? Perhaps. I was feeling very sad and discouraged.

This morning, I found myself with some unexpected alone time, the first for a long while, and I gladly spent it pouring out my tired and miserable heart to God in my notebook (and also through tears and spoken pleading).

My circumstances aren’t any different. I still don’t know what timescale I may be waiting on. But I felt comforted, and encouraged in my waiting. Whatever God is doing inside me through this waiting, I believe he has good purpose for. The way to see that good purpose as soon as possible is to wait well.

Annie F. Downs writes, ‘Be brave enough to be patient—not just outwardly, but inwardly.’ Patience is much harder on the inside than it is on the outside, and patience on the outside is pretty difficult most of the time. I wait bravely with patience by training my thoughts to go to the right place when I get frustrated or fearful. I wait bravely with patience when I surrender my waiting time to God and ask how he would have me spend it. I wait bravely with patience when I remind myself that if the right timing of the end of the waiting was now, it would be now. I don’t know which of those is the hardest, but I’m going to keep trying, bravely.