Wait.

Wait.  Even the word hurts me.  I just don’t like it.  Is it possible to enjoy the wait?  Isn’t waiting a waste of time?  After all, who would purposely get in the longest line?  I don’t like the wait because it bores me.  I like some stimulation please.  Give me something to keep my mind hopping.  Something that is not boring.  The thing is I flit around from stimulant to stimulant, but do I ever really get anywhere?  I occupy the mind at the expense of the soul. 

 I’m a jealous person.  All my life, I’ve been jealous.  I look at other people and want what they have – not materially so much, but spiritually, or socially, or family wise or personality wise or talent wise.  I’m competitive.  I see someone doing what I want to do, being who I want to be and if I can’t get there – and fast – I’m jealous.  Someone has done what I want to do, been successful.  It makes me mad.  The truth is I’m ugly.  The real me is really ugly.  I try to be like so and so or live up to something written by so and so and it just leaves me frustrated and defeated all over again.  I keep trying to make other peoples experiences my experiences instead of doing the hard work of having my own experience.  Having my own experience starts with the wait.  Paul, after his conversion, he consulted with no one for like 3 years – didn’t even want to consult with the other disciples – why is that?  Could it be because he wanted his own uninfluenced by others experience of God?  Before his conversion he was the best in the strictest sense of the word.  Could it be he knew the minute he was with the other disciples he’d start comparing, start one-up-ing them, start striving again?  Wisdom from above is first of all pure.  He wanted his own pure experience of God.  What if instead of looking for someone to look up to or something to strive after, I consulted with no one.  What if I did the most agonizing thing of all and learned to just wait.  To wait for my own pure experience of God.  After all, it’s not supposed to be about me anyway, right?  What if my life was swept away into the river of the glory of God?  Nothing would be too small to be pure.  To do one small pure thing would be better than doing the greatest thing I can imagine with mixed motives.  Who will rescue me from this bitter envy and selfish ambition?  Just looking to Him with this poison in my veins is all the rescue I need and the moment I do I recognize that I have been swept away.  I was swept away the day He condemned my jealous, competitive, ugly self in His Son.   

“Wait thou my soul upon God alone, for my expectation if from Him.”  When I am at the mercy of someone else, there is no option but to wait.  I’m finding that with God, there really is no other option.   Forever and always, I am at His mercy, at the mercy of His glorious will.  So, Lord, let me be content with Your will for me, even if Your will is to use me for a common pot.