The sound of little-boy giggles outside her tent rouses Sarah to a sleepy half consciousness. Burying her face in her pillow, she chokes back tears. It has been years since she has cried, decades since she has really believed she will hold the son Abraham has promised.

You should be past this by now, she tells herself as her chest tightens, spasms. Seventy-five years old—can’t you just accept the thing and die?

And in that moment, with another woman’s son still squealing happily outside the tent walls, she makes up her mind: Today. She will do it today.

“Hagar!” she calls. “Hagar!”

Sarah scrutinizes her Egyptian maid for the thousandth time. Hagar will prove no real temptation for Abraham—just a simple young woman with the one thing Sarah lacks: a functional womb.

Hagar takes an uncertain step inside Sarah’s room. “Shall I bring some breakfast, my lady? “No.” “Call Abraham. Tell him I must speak with him at once.”

As she leaves, Sarah runs fingers through her hair. I’m through with waiting. In ten months, I will hold my son. 

I know what it is to wait for a child. To allow hope to rise month after heartbreaking month, thinking, Maybe this month, maybe this time. . . .it just has to work this one time…Let’s drop in on some “highlights” from my baby-wait.

Mother’s Day, Year One: Difficult, but Bearable

I grit my teeth and muscle my way through the church service, avoid looking at all the happy mommies with their corsages and toddler-made bead necklaces. I am not reading the verses the preacher points us to about Mary the mother of Jesus; I am reading Ps. 119:82–84 (HCSB):

My eyes grow weary

looking for what You have promised;

I ask, “When will You comfort me?”

Though I have become like a wineskin dried by smoke,

I do not forget Your statutes.

How many days must Your servant wait?

Mother’s Day, Year Two: A Battlefield, with Carnage

My preacher husband has insisted I go to the service in spite of my protests. I’m there, but I’m angry. I wear a dress that flatters my non-pregnant figure and take secret comfort that I’m not fighting post-baby muffin-top like everyone else my age. 

I wish I could say I have handled my many waiting times with grace and elegance and faith, but I haven’t. I’m sorry to say that, like Sarah, my patience, my faithful Spirit, my God-knows- what-He’s-doing attitude tend to wilt the longer I have to wait for God’s definitive answer. Waiting like this, for so long, does something to your hope, your heart. Whatever you are waiting for—true love or a baby, a job or a friend—the longer you wait, the more time God—and Satan—has to work on you.

My Waiting Friends

As I write these words, all of my friends are waiting for something.

One friend waits for The Job. She has spent two years honing skills, buying suits, revising résumés, getting so close. As confidence wanes, debt piles high.

Another friend has The Job but can’t find The Guy. Will I ever be loved? Will I always live alone?

Another friend has never had a true best friend. She has offered her heart, time and again, but never found her. She is happily married, close to her kids, but even so there’s a hole in her heart, a lonely place.

Meanwhile, another friend waits for The Cure. She has seen a dozen doctors. Spent thousands of dollars. Still she suffers; still she waits.

Another friend waits for The Return: Her son has strayed from God. He is a good kid—respectful, trustworthy, talented—but God is low on his priority list.

Several friends wait for The Escape: the day beloved husbands fully break free from chains of pornography and substance abuse.

Another friend waits for The Miracle. She rests in a hospital bed, hoping her body will hold the baby she so desperately wants. She has lost this battle before, and now the doctors aren’t making any guarantees. All she can do is rest and wait and pray. Please. . .

All of these are real situations going on right now in my circle of friends. Waiting comes in myriad forms, but we all face it. Every woman everywhere. No matter what kind of wait you are enduring today, know this: your pain, your doubt, your struggles, your feelings are real. Valid. You have a wound that needs tending. 

THE PITFALLS OF WAITING

Sarah waited longer than most of us have even been alive. In a sense, her life is a study in waiting. God has promised Abraham and Sarah a child, but He left out one tiny detail: when (Gen. 15:1–6).

Decades pass.

Faith fades.

Sarah falters.

Convinced that God’s promise isn’t happening, Sarah decides to take matters into her own hands before it’s too late. 

Have you ever thought something like this:

• If I knew I wasn’t going to find true love, maybe I could get busy building a fulfilling life as a single woman.
• If I knew I wasn’t going to have the career I’ve longed for, maybe I could devote my time and energy to other things.
• If I knew I wasn’t going to get pregnant, maybe I could find a way to accept it and move forward, consider other options.

I tell myself I wouldn’t mind waiting so much if God just told me, “Yes, you’re going to get what you want, but buckle up for a long ride—it’s going to take a while.” I convince myself I could handle that kind of wait.

But who am I kidding? Sarah got the if—the promise direct from God, the money-back guarantee—and still she struggled. She wanted more. She wanted when.

I want more, too.

When I’m waiting, I want more than just a yes or no from God. It’s not enough to know if ; I want to know when. I want a timeline. A fat red circle on the calendar. 

But life doesn’t work that way; God doesn’t work that way. It is in the not knowing that God can work on our heart, our faith, our character. It is in the not knowing that 2 Peter 1 and James 1 collide:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8)

Christians are meant to grow—to become godlier, more loving, more self-controlled, better at persevering—so we don’t stagnate spiritually. Spiritual growth is a lifetime process we never outgrow. Smack in the middle of this character-building process we find the trait we desperately need when we are waiting: perseverance. Let’s pair this passage with what James says about perseverance:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4)

Did you catch that last phrase—“let perseverance finish its work”—as in it’s up to us to allow that work to happen so we can grow? If we let Him, God can use our waiting journeys to shape us, to make us into the people He created us to be.

So, what do you do when God says wait? Waiting seasons aren’t fun, but they are opportunities. Through our waiting seasons, perseverance can gradually “finish” its never-ending work in us. As waiting does its thing, God does His, we get the chance to become the people God designed us to be.  

PITFALLS ON WAITING JOURNEYS

Choosing who we want to be during waiting seasons starts with identifying the enemy’s traps so we can avoid them. The pitfalls of waiting are many, but here are some of the most dangerous:

1.  The pitfall of bitterness:

I can’t believe this has happened to me. I’ve spent years trusting and serving God, and this is what I get in return?

2.  The pitfall of selfishness:

I can’t be there for anyone else—it’s all I can do just to get through each day.

3.  The pitfall of self-reliance:

God is not taking care of me, so I’ll have to take care of myself.

4.  The pitfall of doubt:

Does God love me? Does He even know I exist? 

5.  The pitfall of manipulation:

I can’t stand it anymore. If God won’t fix my problems, then I will. My plan may not be exactly biblical, but I can’t sit around and wait forever. 

6.  The pitfall of cynicism:

Just look at that happy woman over there—she had better enjoy happiness while it lasts. 

7.  The pitfall of envy:

Why would God give her the thing I’ve been begging for all these months. She doesn’t deserve it.

8.  The pitfall of self-pity:

Everyone else is happy but me. Everyone else has what she wants except me. 

9.  The pitfall of faithlessness:

God has forgotten me. I don’t know why I even bother praying.

10.  The pitfall of depression:

My life is over. I’ll never be happy again unless this waiting ends.

At some point in my times of waiting, I have indulged in every one of these thoughts. Satan loves to take advantage of our weaknesses, but God can turn even weakness into strength (Heb. 11:34). Sarah’s story helps us see some of the dangerous places these pitfalls can lead to if left unchecked.

God Gets (and Gives) the Last Laugh

In Genesis 12 (eleven years before the Hagar Incident), God tells Abraham and Sarah to leave their family, their home, and go. . .somewhere. So not only does Sarah spend fifty or sixty years struggling with infertility, but she also leaves the place she knows, the people she loves, to join her husband on an endless road trip. As Sarah’s baby-wait stretches long, she succumbs to bitterness, doubt, faithlessness, and manipulation. It’s easier to understand how she got to the desperate place, the “Hey, Abraham, I’ve got a great idea—have a baby with my servant girl!” place.

The Hagar Incident brings trouble and heartache on everyone involved (Gen. 16). Even though God steps in to prevent absolute disaster, some long-term conflict remains. When we try to take over and do things our way instead of God’s way, we may face some painful consequences.

But do you know what I adore about God? He doesn’t define Sarah by this moment of weakness. Does Sarah forever grapple with the irreversible consequences of that unfortunate decision? Yes. But God doesn’t permanently label Sarah the crazy infertile lady who blew it and ruined everybody’s lives. Notice God’s positive words about Sarah, seventeen hundred years later, in the Bible’s first-century writings: “By faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise” (Heb. 11:11).

Sarah nuzzles the newborn son she never thought she would hold, sharing a laugh with God. She wrestled with, and fell prey to, many—if not all—of the temptations you and I face during our waiting seasons. She fell and fell hard. She wept, and wept hard. 

But that was not the end of her story. Her faith survived, her marriage survived, her laughter survived. I don’t know how your waiting story ends—how long you will wait, and will God say yes?—but this I know: You may be sad and struggling now, but God can restore laughter in the end.

• He can bring back joy after months, years, even decades of waiting.
• He can bring back joy after you have doubted and questioned.
• He can bring back joy after you have made mistakes—yes, even the kind with lasting consequences.

Waiting is a journey of testing, fraught with spiritual danger but rife with opportunity. Like Sarah, like us, each of our Bible heroes had to decide how to think and who to be during their in- between times. They didn’t get everything they wanted, but many of them became the people God wanted them to be. God used their waiting times to shape them into instruments He could use for powerful purposes.

Your story isn’t over. 

~ By Elizabeth Laing Thompson