He's in the waiting

I hate ants. If I thought there was a word stronger than hate, I would use it. This fall, my hate for ants has overtaken my hate for spiders and creamed spinach and the sound of nails on a chalkboard. It is that bad. We have had an ant infestation that has grown from a few ants by our back door, to hoards of them that have taken over my kitchen, my bathroom, and various other corners of our house. We have done everything we can think of to get rid of them from cleaning the house top to bottom (regularly), spraying, using a pest control company, praying, you name it.

When I think about what bothers me most about these teeny crawling little bugs, its their persistence. Just when I think we have turned the corner and won the battle on these pests, I find one crawling out of my laptop on my desk at work, knowing full well it has traveled from the coffee table at home where my laptop rested all night. These little guys don't give up easily and they have come to be quite content in our home that I am ready to burn to the ground (yes I do have a flair for the dramatics, thank you for asking!).

As I smashed the little guy on my desk this morning and contemplated muttering a less than holy word or two under my breath, I was reminded of other ants in my life. The persistent things that never seem to go away no matter how hard I try. Things like doubt, worry, unbelief, control.

October was a good month for us. We tracked right along toward our goal for becoming fully certified as foster parents. A few last minute scrambles to get the final pieces of our file into our agency before the deadline left us feeling confident and optimistic. But after our certification meeting on the 29th, we found out good news and bad news. Though our home-study had been approved by our agency's certification committee, our background checks from NC and GA had stalled. We would not be seeing the words "you are fully certified as foster parents" written in an email in the month of October. The ants of doubt, worry, fear, and unbelief began to crawl out of the woodwork and become very apparent for me.

How much longer are we going to be waiting? Did the state governments receive our background checks? Are they lost? Will they ever get back to our agency? Are they lost at our agency? Will we ever get certified? Is God even calling us to this? Y'all I can spiral out of control with my questions real fast, just like one or two ants in your kitchen can quickly turn into hoards of them all over the house.

And I have gone round for round with these questions for months now. Circling on them, praying over them, surrendering them and their answers to the control and wisdom of the Lord, just to days later let my creeping doubts take over and leave me grasping back at the control for finding out the answers in my own ways. This constant cycle of realizing the issue, treating it, and having it come creeping back again reminds me so much of our darn ants.

The common responses we hear from friends when we share that we are still waiting are the "all in God's timing" and "God is growing your patience" types of phrases. They are certainly true. But, something I have realized lately is that I keep praying for God to show up and advance our position, when God is already here. God is here in our waiting.

I went to turn on my worship playlist and this song was the first one to play. The chorus sings:

Take courage my heart 

Stay steadfast my soul

He's in the waiting

He's in the waiting

Hold onto your hope

As your triumph unfolds

He's never failing

He's never failing

And He has been here in the waiting with us. He's been carving out spaces for us to find extra rest, extra date nights and time together as a couple, and time with our community. He has shown up by giving us times of laughter and joy. If we weren't so stubbornly looking on where we want to go/be, we would be able to see the blessings He is raining down on us each day. And maybe that's a far better treatment for the ants we have in our lives, something that will keep them at bay daily. In the waiting, we keep our hearts still, eyes transfixed, and feet moving as we are called. And one day, the right day, the perfect day, we will see those words "certified Foster Parents" and "ready for a placement".