Waiting Well

Almost 16 years to the day of the first time setting foot on our 40-acre piece in Powell Butte, we are done.  The last 8 years were a struggle.  It's a bittersweet feeling to have it behind us.  When I signed the papers I felt thankful, relief, and sad.  Thankful for the time we had and thankful that it is finally over.  Relief that it sold and we don't have the weight of it on our shoulders or on our finances any longer.  The sad part is that it didn't go the way we planned and it feels like a defeat more than a victory.

After all these years of praying and waiting to see how it was all going to turn out, one of the biggest things I wished I would have done differently; I wished I would have waited well.

We prayed and fasted and tried everything in our own power to "fix it" any way we could.  

The part I didn't do well was waiting on the Lord.  We waited all right, we had no choice, when our Father decides it is time to wait, it is time to wait.  The last few years I gave up on my plans and waited much better, but it took about 6 years of high stress and struggle, to get to the 2 years of surrendering to the process and wait.

We kept living, we kept using our piece of the planet for many gatherings, and celebrations and fellowship, we brought home babies and adopted kids over the course of the wait.  We lived full speed ahead but with a knot in our stomachs for much of the time. I often felt guilty and anxious about our situation.  I felt crazy with trying to figure out how it was all going to work out and what was NEXT for us.  Little did I know God was putting every piece together for us to come to Montana and enjoy 6 grown married kids and an undisclosed number of GRANDS, while still raising the 6 kids still at home.

 If I would have known we were all going to be here at this time altogether, I would have spent every minute of every day trying to figure it out, plan it, and control it.  I would have made myself and everyone around me miserable.

  Instead, God chooses to keep working out a plan for my good and not telling me anything about it, He knows I would have taken the information and ran with it, probably ran it right into a ditch.

My prayer is that I have learned how to wait well.  I have no doubt God has a good plan, so my prayer is, as He is working out His will and plan for our lives, that I wait well.

Currently, we are waiting for Charlie to be able to join the family full time and I have once again failed at waiting well on several occasions, but hoping I have learned some things along the way and I can wait well from here on out.