The Women of Christmas/Anna
I hate to wait.
There I said it.
Once I have decided on something, after thinking and researching I have made up my mind this next thing is a good idea for my life, I want it immediately. This applies to things I want to purchase, things I want to do, ideas I want to make reality. If you want to talk me out of something, do it before I have made up my mind. I have a pretty long ideation process where I consider all angles of something, this is the time for me to opt out of an idea or desire. Once my will is set, it is hard to back away.
Before I made a website, put up a Facebook page or moved forward in any tangible way with Stories Foundation and the Cafe I remember asking my mom if we were really going to do this. I knew once I decided inside myself to pursue a giveback cafe to fight human trafficking there was no going back and I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be left alone in this big, crazy idea to try and do some good. It has felt like a long wait for the cafe to be tangible and along the way countless people have told me “God’s timing is perfect” which I heard as, stop pushing and wait.
I have learned a lot about waiting in my life, mostly because I am terrible at it and I think you have to keep learning lessons about the areas in your life where you need improvement. Well, waiting is that for me for sure. I can go hours without eating, but once I realize I am hungry, I can’t wait another hour for dinner. I want to eat right then. We decided to sell our house this fall and are now looking for a new one at the absolute worst time of year, waiting to see our new house is painful for my visionary mind. We are moving. It is done. I am tired of waiting for our next home to show up. In fact, this whole year has been one where my waiting has been tested. I don’t even know what we are waiting for anymore. Covid to go away? A vaccine to save us? I just want there to be a day when I can go to Target without a mask and breath freely.
Can you hear it? I am itching with impatience. My will to wait has been tested this year and I am exhausted; waiting for someone who hates to wait is exhausting. Depleting. I feel like a child when her mom asks her to wait, I need it spelled out. A timeline. Just tell me what I am waiting for and when I am going to get it and I can wait, maybe begrudgingly, but I will stop whining at least.
But I am not a child, I am a grown woman and even more than that I have been called to live a life of faith in God who knows the future, the beginning from the end. Whatever the intention was, all those people who have said “God’s timing is perfect”, they were and are exactly right. His timing is perfect and I know I can trust it. More than that, whether I am walking forward in the unknown or waiting for what is next this is what faith is all about. Trusting God for my every step, knowing as I surrender my will to his better one his plan will come to fruition in my life.
This year as I was reading the Christmas story in Luke, a character jumped out at me who I normally pass over, Anna. As I have been thinking of Anna I realized she must have known something about waiting. If we look at what we know of Anna from a human perspective her story is sad. Married for only 7 years she was a young widow, it looks like she didn’t have children because she went and made her home the temple and she spent the rest of her life “serving God night and day with fasting and prayers”. Yet, when I read this passage about Anna I don’t see a depressed widow, I see a women full of light, joy, love and peace. It makes me cry, God was her husband. She spent her days with him.
Did she ever want a new husband? Was she waiting for God’s purpose to be revealed in her life? When women came to dedicate their firstborn sons did she feel a twinge at not holding a baby in her arms? I have to believe Anna was human and she, like all of us, had dreams and hopes. We know she was a prophetess and maybe like Simeon in the preceding verses God had whispered to her heart something was coming that would change everything.
Either way I learn a few things from Anna about waiting. First, waiting isn’t passive. Anna spent her days in the temple with Jesus. Which means serving God and spending time in his presence is the work of waiting and passive work it is not. This lesson I must grab hold to and remember. In this season of waiting we are given an opportunity to sit in the presence of God and serve him where he has placed us with what is in front of us.
I desperately want to be in the future in many ways. But I am called to serve God and be with him in the present. This means being a present mom to my girls, now. Being grateful for the beautiful home I have and that we are here for one last Christmas season. It means recounting the ways God has been moving me out of the waiting for Storyteller Cafe this past year and being thankful. God has things for me in the waiting, when I look back at my past seasons of waiting I see the lessons learned in seasons of waiting have been the most important ones.
Anna was ready for her moment when she met Jesus because she had chosen to be intimate with God, serving him every day, faithfully right where he had put her. The prophesy, encouragement, and praise that flowed from her that day was an overflow of what was already happening within her.
This is what I want to define me.
When I get to see the movement God has been making all along in my waiting I want to be in such a place with him that praise for him and the truth of what he has done and is doing just rolls off my lips.
I don’t know if waiting came more naturally for Anna or if she was like me and struggled. I like to think she had a strong will shown in her leaving her home and family to live in the temple and serve God as a young woman. I have learned my strong will is a gift, as long as I surrender it to God and allow him to make my will strong for serving him and resting in his working and way.
I might always struggle with contentment in an unknown present, especially one where I have very little control over the future. Like right now when there are barely any houses on the market. Or with fundraising for a giveback cafe when I can put the need out there but have no ability to coerce people to give (nor would I want to, like God, I only want cheerful financial partners). I want to become better at waiting, I want to have peace in the present, to learn to trust when my only move is to serve God where I am at and spend time soaking in his presence.
Maybe I will finally learn there is nothing better than being in the center of God’s plan while he is working it out, even if it means I have to wait.