Writer Brandi Holland shares her season of waiting and praying for a husband. From young twenties to adulthood, many of us can relate to this season. I shared a similar story in The Husband List and Brandi shares eloquently here with encouragement and love.

When I was in college, I was blessed to be in a Christian university where I had many awesome opportunities to hear God’s Word taught daily.  Once a week, our entire campus of about 2,000 students gathered for a chapel service. One day, I learned an important lesson about waiting on God.

Trusting God’s Plan

That particular morning, we had a really interesting speaker.  The man was a chalk artist. And while I don’t remember exactly what the man said, I do remember what happened when he started drawing.

Christian music started to play in the background as he drew a beautiful sunset onto a super-sized canvas. He added details such as trees, grass, a mountain, and then a cave within the mountain.

And then, he took a piece of black chalk and drew two large squiggly lines right thru the center of the mural. I wanted to stand up and protest!!  I couldn’t believe that he would ruin his beautiful art by putting these big marks right in the middle!  

But that wasn’t the end of the artists work.  He continues to add to those squiggly marks until they became a road coming from the cave in the mountain.  And before I knew it, there was the figure of Jesus running from the tomb that this artist had created! I sat there with tears in my eyes, there was such beauty from what looked like a huge mistake!

Right in that moment I felt many of the emotions that we often feel as we wait for God to answer our seemingly endless prayers!  The hope of a beautiful dream that we long for, the fear that He might just be doing it wrong, and the realization that He is doing more than we could ask or hope for!

Our Need For Control

As humans, we are prone to want to control “the big picture”!  Yes God, I will trust you with my future, just make sure that I get a good job and marry a handsome husband!  

We like, Abraham and Sarah, get impatient when God seems to be slow in keeping His promises.  We are so thankful for the blessing that He promises us, but occasionally we feel the need to “help” Him along when it seems that He must have forgotten us!  And all we do is bring heartache upon ourselves for not waiting upon God’s timing. 

God Is In Our Waiting

I think sometimes we feel while we are waiting on God to answer our prayers, that we are waiting for Him to arrive.  When in reality, God is with us and beside us through each step of our waiting.  

Sometimes, we are in turmoil, He is still there.  Sometimes, we are heartbroken over things not working out the way that we wanted, and He is there. And sometimes, we lose hope in Him coming thru to answer, and even when we give up on Him, He doesn’t give up on us!

My Own Time Of Waiting

I went through a season of waiting in my twenties.  Like many young Christian women, I was waiting and praying that the Lord would send me a Godly husband.  

I had such a fear that God wanted me to stay single that I would plead with Him regularly to allow me to marry and have a family.  But in the back of my mind I felt like maybe God is going to make me stay single, you know… for His glory?

Of course looking back now, I can see how flawed my thinking was!  God has placed within us certain desires. We just have to trust Him with them! 

This is one of my favorite poems, I wrote it in the back of my Bible as a reminder to trust God in the waiting!

God’s Plan in My Waiting

Little did I know, that only a few miles away, there was a Godly young man also praying that God would send him a wife.  During those years of prayer, there were lots of changes in my life and even some heartache from running ahead of God. But He had a plan.

He used this time of waiting to strengthen me, and to help me let go of “my plan”, for the better, fuller, more wonderful plan that He had for my life! God worked out details that we couldn’t have, even if we had tried!  He was in control, and as long as we kept out hands out of His work, everything worked beautifully. 

Seeing The Big Picture

And today, I have been married to that Godly man, for 12 years!  We have 4 beautiful, rambunctious (and tiring, but wonderful) children. And the foundation of our home is the Lord!  

Now, this doesn’t mean that our children never fight, that my husband and I don’t fuss about who should give the kids baths tonight, or that we are always perfectly content.  But what it does mean, is that after waiting for the Lord to answer our prayer, when He finally did, we know that it HE IS IN CONTROL of our lives, our marriage, and our family!  

And we want it to stay that way! We want to walk in His will! My life, although far from perfect, is better than any picture that I had in my mind as a young woman praying for God’s will for her life. 

Building Our Faith

Let me encourage you, Do not waste the waiting!  Draw close to the Lord, He has a plan and a purpose for this time.  Whatever you are waiting for, drawing near to Him will only make it sweeter when He answers your prayer!

Misty mentioned in her post, that her “life verse” is Proverbs 3:5-6. 

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

This verse has also been a lifeline for me and has carried me through many difficult seasons of waiting!  It is such a beautiful encouragement for us to continue to trust in the Lord! Find your life verse and hold fast to God’s promises!

Continuing to Trust Him

Today, I am learning a whole new level of trust in God.  I have to trust Him with the lives and futures of my children. And when I want to force them into a mold that isn’t really what God has made them to do or be, I have to stop and realize that He has a wonderful plan for them too!  

Ugo Betti said, 

“To believe in God is to know that all the rules will be fair and there will be wonderful surprises.”

What a blessing it is to know THE ONE who “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think…”  Don’t be afraid to trust God with your dreams. Wait upon the Lord, He has wonderful surprises planned for You!