Sleeplessly Waiting

It's one in the morning. . .Tuesday morning, that is, not Saturday, as you might think. I do have to work tomorrow. . .today. I should be in bed, sleeping soundly. But, being the incredibly intelligent person that I'm often not, I drank a medium-sized vanilla latte at nine o'clock. That means it had at least 2 shots of espresso in it, possibly 3. So now I can't sleep. . .go figure. And I'm starting to shake. It's all part of the coffee cycle. You'd think I'd know better, but I was swept off my feet by the charming company I had. And it wasn't even Kevin.

Before you get worried, rest assured that I was out with my brother. He invited me to dinner tonight (well. . .us, but if you know us, you know what Kevin spends all his time doing these days. . .one week to go until the big defense!), and then we went for coffee. I had a great time. If only I could now go to sleep. . .

In lieu of rest, I'll share my thoughts.

The people at Wittingshire posted a mini series recently on the theme of waiting. The phrase that keeps running through my mind is waiting in confidence. I'm doing a lot of waiting right now. The future is. . .unknown, to say the least. I don't know where we'll be 3 months from now, and those 3 months seems both very short and very long at the same time. It's exciting, and unnerving. There are other things I don't know. There are things everyone has to wait for, to wait to find out even: where we'll live, who we'll be close to, what we'll do every day, if we'll have children, how many children we'll have, how our friends and family will fare in their life choices, and more. We don't even know that we will be here tomorrow to wait for the things we're waiting for, really. For some of those things, we are waiting and wishing--fervently, sometimes desperately--for a certain result. We want things to happen a certain way. And the uncertainty of waiting becomes that much more unnerving.

That's where waiting in confidence comes in. It is waiting patiently in the secure knowledge that God gives good gifts to His children. It does not mean I know what those gifts will be. I do not know if He will give me what I wish for. I do not even know that I will always recognize His gifts as good when they come. But I know He has promised to give good. And I can rest in that. I can rest (at least when I haven't had too many shots of espresso. . .currently rest is a foreign word altogether) in the confidence that what God has planned for me is good in His eyes. I still wish. I still pray and ask for the things I wish for. But my confidence is not in the hope for those things. It is in the surety of God's good and perfect will for me, even when I do not know it.

There is peace there, and I welcome it in this time of waiting.