The hills & valleys of waiting.

I love metaphors.

They are such fun little packages waiting to be unpacked. And they have this beautiful ability to help explain the unexplainable. What’s not to love about them?

One of my favorite metaphors for life with God is the image of our life as full of hills & valleys. It is so clear and easy to understand.

I can easily plot points of my life as either a hilltop or valley experience. You know what’s funny though? The further I get away from the experience, the better I get at recognizing how deep those valleys really were and flat land moments tend to be a bit higher on the scale.

I’ve also been discovering that every hill and valley has its own set of hills & valleys within it. Take my current circumstance: my waiting. On the big picture scale, I want to place it as a valley moment. I want to say it’s a low moment in my life. And perhaps it is. I need to wait till I get to another hilltop or valley before I can fairly assess it. But within this time of waiting (which technically started in January) there have been so many hills & valleys that I can’t fairly account for all of them. However, I want to share the little journey I have been on just in the past week and 1/2 as I have focused intently on what I am waiting for and where God is in all of this.

I have to say the first few days into this series of writing about your waiting were life-giving to me. I felt refreshed and rejuvenated with the truth that was pouring from this blog.

I was ready to post about the awesomeness of God and His sovereignty in my life. Then I hit week 2, and it was not a kind week to me. I was coming off a weird weekend: we had celebrated my cousins wedding, but mourned my sister’s cancelled flight that prevented her from attending. Then I spent three days subbing at a school that was not a good fit for me.

I felt like I was drowning—overwhelmed by a situation I did not know how to handle. I cried out and I complained: I know that I am in a season of waiting, but did it all have to be so hard? I couldn’t see any evidence of God working in my life. I was so downtrodden.

When the sub assignment was over I was relieved to return to my life of waiting. See it was supposed to be a long term job, which I had thought was what I wanted. I was so wrong. When I tried to control my life and make things happen I discovered gut-wrenching dissatisfaction. It was awful. BUT. It lead to me the realization and understanding that: The right classroom is out there and the wait will be worth it.

This experience made me want to wait. It made me grateful. I still want my own classroom. I still want to move out of my childhood bedroom, but not until it is right.

I can’t wait to see where this series takes me next!