The Waiting Season

I sat on the sofa sipping my morning coffee, fuzzy blanket pulled up snugly, the warmth from the heater turned up full blast, and I gazed out the window while I prayed. A veil of melancholy hung on my shoulders, certainly lighter than the colorful throw on my lap, but there nonetheless. Waiting was hard. It discouraged you, made you feel uncertain, powerless to change your situation. The waiting. That’s why I felt like I did. As I gazed towards the overcast sky, that certainly mirrored my mood, I saw the top of the tree outside my living room. It had buds.

New growth, I thought.

The Holy Spirit whispered, “you are entering a new growth season.”

The weather couldn’t make up its mind, you know? Warm, cool, hot, cold. All of the above. Shorts one day and a toboggan the next had tricked my tree into thinking it was spring. I could certainly relate. Promises of wonderful things ahead can come, just over the horizon, a glimpse you see. Warm, shining on your face, the hope of radiant light and a more agreeable season. But then it slips out of sight.

You realize you’re in the waiting season.

Waiting for that joyful warmth on your face.

Almost. Not yet.

You open your emotions to the coming of it. Anticipation blooms. Then nothing.

You’re in the waiting season.

Waiting for spring, waiting for the light, waiting for a lifeline, for answers, for solutions, for next steps, for guidance, direction, the answer to urgently whispered prayers.

A most peculiar thing happens in the waiting places. You grow. Your endurance, your strength, your dependence on Jesus, your faith. They all grow. You bloom. In the waiting season you enter into a new growth season too, reaching levels in your relationship with the Lord you never knew possible. Hope springs, and joy comes in the morning. It also comes in the waiting places.

God says, “I am taking you to new heights with me. I am growing you to be the one I always knew you could be, to do the things I have always had planned for you.”

Your waiting season is also a new growth season.

In your waiting, God can open doors no man can shut.

Isaiah 43:19

See, I am doing a new thing!

    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

    and streams in the wasteland.

I looked up at the new buds ready to burst forth on the tree outside my window. Waiting was hard, but I was grateful for it. Waiting changes you. It strengthens you. It makes you new. I looked down at the dead leaves on the ground. Remnants of last season, blowing away in the wind even as I watched. In a waiting season the old you dies, it falls away, and Jesus brings new growth.

I’m in a waiting season. I am in a season of new growth. Hallelujah. I am grateful. I am growing. I am being made new.