Waiting Is Not Wasting

A dear friend sat at our kitchen table not long ago and confessed she had folded the same load of laundry three times that morning—not because the clothes needed refolding, but because her hands needed something to do while the two pink lines refused to appear, month after month, for two painful years. Her sister-in-law had just announced a second pregnancy, and she had smiled and embraced her in the driveway before slipping inside to fold towels that were already folded. If she sat still, she told me, she would have to feel the full, hollow shape of what waiting had become: less like a season and more like a sentence.

In seasons like that, the imagery of Scripture can almost feel offensive before it feels comforting. James speaks of the farmer waiting for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient through the early and the late rains. But as my friend pointed out, a farmer at least gets to look at a field and see soil that has been planted. When waiting involves empty rooms or unanswered prayers, there are no visible green shoots. Yet what James highlights is not passive waiting; he tells us to establish our hearts. That is its own quiet, unseen labor—a bracing against despair that happens one day at a time, season after season, when nothing visible is growing yet.

Waiting rarely feels like spiritual formation while you are inside it. Most days, it simply feels like an ache that refuses to leave. But God does not waste the quiet seasons of his children. Even in the silence, the heart is being established on something deeper than visible outcomes.