While You’re Waiting
While riding the Portland Metro one day, Sarah Thebarge met Hadhi, a Somali refugee who was struggling to rear five young daughters after her husband walked out. Sarah had left her Ivy League education and successful career in New England to start over in Oregon. She taught Hadhi and her girls, who were nearly starving in their home, how to navigate the system to receive assistance.
In her book, The Invisible Girls, Sarah wrote of being diagnosed in her twenties. Although she and her boyfriend had talked about marriage, he couldn’t handle her cancer. And now, here on the west coast with a new start and a broken heart, Sarah was being the hands and feet of Jesus to Hadhi and her girls.
I met Sarah when I enrolled in her eight-hour writing workshop. She had something to say about waiting and encouraged us to include the middle parts of our narratives in our writing.
“When we tell stories that start with a sudden beginning and jump to an ending that only God could write, we skip over a crucial part of the story,” Sarah said. “The middle. The place where we wait. Where we sit in silence. Where we have no answers. Where our hearts ache and we can’t sleep and we wonder if we’ll ever feel whole again.”
I’m not good at waiting. I’m the girl who likes to pick the best option, roll up her sleeves, and start working to make it happen. Push through it. Don’t rest in it. Don’t wait in it. Press forward.
And so I suspect God had people like me in mind when he inspired the psalmist to write:
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.” – Psalm 37:7
Wait. Yachal in the original Hebrew. It’s translated, “to wait, hope for, expect” (not that I know Hebrew, but there are Bible apps).
Do you see what I see? We’re not only to wait patiently, but we’re to wait with expectation and hope.
If there are no open doors, then … wait. And while we’re waiting, do what we know to do. Show up at work. Write the thank-you note to Aunt Mabel. Take a meal to the neighbors with the new baby.
It was there, in the middle place of waiting, that Sarah Thebarge developed an outward focus at a time when she was hurting. And consequently, while tending to Hadhi’s broken places, Sarah’s own broken heart was healed.
What if we could live in the moment? Because if we’re living in the future—whether it’s a calling, a different location than here, a dreamed-about husband or wife—if that’s where we’re living, then we’re wasting this present moment. And this present moment is my life, your life, made up of seconds and minutes strung together into days.
