Waiting

I hate waiting.

Impatience

I have often told my husband that I am the least patient person I know.  I epitomize impatience.  There are two kinds of patience.  The first kind is patience with people- being able to handle frustrating situations or people with kindness and not getting upset or angry.  This kind is actually something I do well.  The second kind of patience is the kind that I do not seem to possess.  It is waiting for things to happen without losing it.  Like I said, I hate waiting.

For at least six weeks before we became engaged I am sure I proposed to J every day.  I wanted to be engaged so badly!  I knew we were going to get married, and we had even talked about when, but I just wanted all of my family and friends to know that we were getting married.  I wanted our relationship to be taken as seriously by the rest of the world as we took it.  And I was excited about entering a new stage of our relationship.  Thankfully, I think that J has both my and his share of patience.  Every time I asked him to marry me, he would say, "Hey, I'm going to ask that question," or something to that effect.  It was adorable.

At the time I thought that waiting for that ring was the hardest thing I've ever had to wait for.  I thought that those months of knowing he was going to propose but not knowing when would kill me.  But they did not, and looking back with the experiences of the past few years under my belt, that waiting experience was nothing, easy, a piece of cake compared with what was to come.  It is one thing to wait for something you know will happen eventually.  It is another thing to wait for something when you do not know if it will ever happen.

Waiting Impatiently

Right now there are two main things I am waiting for.  One is much, much harder to wait for than the other, but they are both tearing me up inside.  I just graduated from college a month ago, and I am waiting to get a job.  In a perfect world I would be teaching high school math in a Lutheran school starting in August.  In the real world I just need a 40hr a week job that pays money, and if I could teach and use my degree at all, that would be great.  I have been applying for jobs since March and I just got my first phone interview a few days ago.  The interview is next week, so it's still a waiting game.  And the goal of that interview is just to get to the second interview so that maybe I can be considered for a position.  At this point I will take anything I can get, but my biggest fear is that August will come around, my current job will end when we move, and I will have nothing to do and no way to make money.  J is going to seminary starting this fall, so while he can work full time, I am supposed to be the bread-winner for a few years.  I feel this immense amount of pressure and yet I have no way of making sure I get a job.

The other thing I am waiting for is a baby.  We have been trying to have a baby for over a year now, and I have been wishing and hoping to start a family since long before then.  I know that we are young, but my dream has always been to get married and start a family right away in my very early 20s.  We waited almost a year after we got married to start trying, and a year later we are nowhere.  We have both started the process of seeing our doctors and trying to diagnose what the problem might be, but it is a long, expensive, and so far inconclusive process.  I know it will only get worse in the next few months.

When I think about why it is so much harder to wait for these things than it was to wait for J to propose there is one obvious answer that jumps out at me.  Like I mentioned before, it is much harder to wait for something when there is no timetable.  If I could know for sure something like "by the end of 2013 you will definitely have a child" then I would still be horribly impatient, but I would be calmer and happier, because I would know that this would happen for me.

Trusting God

Here are two things I know with absolute certainty.

• God loves me.  If he loves me enough to send his son to die for me, then I know that he cares about my happiness.  
• God will always provide for my needs.  Not only does God tell us this in his Word (Matthew 6:25-34) but I know this from experience.  Throughout our college years God has provided for J and I in some incredible, unpredictable, and wonderful ways.  (I may share some examples in a later post.)

This knowledge does help me relax about not knowing if I will have a job or not.  God has gotten us through some tight financial spots before, and I know that he will take care of and provide for us while J is at seminary.  While I would love to know for sure that we will have a good income and be able to pay off our loans right away, it is enough for me to know that all I need to do is fill out applications, work as hard as I can to get a job, and God will take care of the rest and place me exactly where he wants me to be this fall.  

I wish I could say that these two facts I know held any reassurance that I will have a baby soon.  I know that God loves me and wants me to be happy, but when I do not feel happy, this knowledge is not as comforting as I know it should be.  I hate the fact that the struggles of my Trying To Conceive journey have spilled over into my spiritual life, but they have.  I know that babies are a gift from God, and I know that God tells us to have babies.  It is incredibly difficult for me to understand why we do not get to be one of the couples who gets married and gets pregnant within the first year or so.  It just seems like such a wonderful, natural rhythm, and while so many young couples I know are surprised when this blessing happens to them, I actually expected and desired it.  So why am I the one who does not get it?  

There will be more to come on this topic soon.