productive waiting

I think I have mentioned before that I'm not a fan of waiting. I can be patient to a point, but when it is in my power to do something, I want to do it. I set goals, I make lists, I go for what I've set my mind to do. And I take great pride in crossing things off my list!

But what about when God says to wait? What about when I COULD be making progress on my goals and He is seeming to say "wait." I don't like it. I want to be moving forward and accomplishing things. Sometimes it seems like the path between my initial idea/dream/goal and seeing it come to pass is SO long and slow.

Yesterday our DHS worker called about placing a child in our home. Because of a chaotic weekend and various issues that came up during the process of thinking about it we ended up saying no to this one. A part of me was so disappointed. I was ready to welcome another one as soon as Little N left, but I have to wait.

I will give credit to my mom for speaking words that prompted my thoughts in this waiting time....
I have dreams for the future that started several years ago. I journaled about it and I could practically see it! And often I wonder "why is it taking so long?" Why do so many days pass by where it seems like I'm not moving forward and it is just the same routine. Why, when I want to make a difference, does it feel like I am in the same place and not making much of a difference?

And the word that I have been reminding myself of today is "foundation." Build on a lousy, faulty foundation and everything will come crumbling down. But build on a firm, solid foundation and what is built will last. And I'm thinking that maybe in these days...months...even years (!) of waiting that there must be some work to do on the foundation. I get an idea and I'm ready to plunge in, rush ahead, make it happen....and then I have to backtrack and redo mistakes that I made.

So what is it that God is building here exactly? I wish I knew. I felt like He gave me vision years ago, and I've seen the beginning of some of it. But I feel that there must be more He needs to do in the foundation of my life. I can ignore it and push ahead when the waiting process seems painfully slow or I can allow Him to do the work He wants to do in me. I can make the most of each day and build a stronger foundation of prayer, the Word, and relationship with Him or I can bypass that in an effort to move things along. I can spend these days with Daniel laying a good foundation for his life, working through the hard things, being faithful to train, nurture, and pray for him, or I can ignore the issues that come up and deal with the consequences later.

God is apparently not into laying hasty foundations (at least in my life--much to my dismay!) So I pray for patience to work with Him and be willing to live life with His timing, trusting that the end result will be far more solid than if I pushed on with my will in my way.