How to Wait with Vulnerability and Hope
Life is full of waiting.
We wait for job opportunities, wait for pregnancy, wait for medical tests to return. Even in small matters we wait: for lunch, for red lights, for the end of the workday. Waiting is built into our days, month, years, and lifetimes.
But we don’t like to wait.
Waiting often means uncertainty for us. It can mean a future we can’t see or control. It means that we don’t have the answers we want now.
Sometimes, we have to wait on God, and sometimes that waiting comes amid distress. Waiting on God is hard because after a while it seems like there will never be anything in our lives but this waiting.
How can we hold onto hope while we wait?
The good news is that we won’t have to wait forever. Good or bad, easy or hard, everything will, eventually, be resolved and the waiting will be over. Remembering this can help us wait well, with the knowledge that things won’t always be this way.
Every time we choose to hope, we choose to believe that things will change. Hope is wanting that change to happen. Hope is believing that change will happen. Hope is praying that change will come soon.
But hoping is hard because it is a vulnerable act. We can hope for something and it may not happen, leaving us disappointed. We wait and wait and wait, and the thing we wanted to change either doesn’t, or doesn’t change in our favor. To hope is to make ourselves vulnerable to this hurt.
However, as hard as it is, vulnerability is a good thing. It keeps our hearts feeling, open to the emotions and experiences that keep life full of color and beauty. If we close ourselves off to hope, we close ourselves off to the possibility of thriving in life.
So, how do we keep hope when we have been waiting for a long time, knowing that we have been let down in the past and that we may be let down again?
First, we must hold to the memories of hope that has been fulfilled.
We remember what God has done in our lives in the past. Write those things down and re-read them. We remind ourselves that God is a God who wants good things for us. We may not understand why things don’t work in our favor all the time, but that doesn’t diminish God’s love for us or his desire to see good things in our life.
Secondly, we choose to remain vulnerable.
We know that we might get hurt but also remember that the possibility of pain is worth the possibility of change. Hoping with vulnerability allows us to hope for amazing things, and the times our hopes unfold often result in life changing, earth shattering, glorious moments. Take a chance and hope in this way.
The Bible says those that wait on the Lord shall soar on wings like eagles. You are not destined for a small life, and you are not destined to wait. You are created to thrive, to be the fullest version of the person you were meant to be. Waiting is a time of formation, and we can all hope that as we wait, we are being formed into someone like Jesus.
Scripture for Meditation:
Isaiah 40: 29-31
“He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Reflection Questions:
1. What have you been waiting for, in your life?
2. What would it look like to hope with vulnerability? What hope are you holding back out of fear?
3. Spend some time journaling about these hopes, or sit in silence with God. Ask God to speak into the hopes present in your life right now, and then, tell someone about it. Ask them to hope and pray with you.
