Grace in the Waiting
Trusting Jesus in a lavender scented summer
A Lavender Scented Summer
If you didn’t already know, summer is upon us. I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where the climate is cool, rainy, and cloudy most of the year. However, it is not as bad as people think. The sun does pop out quite often, even on rainy and cloudy days.
My favorite thing ever is when the sun shines right after it rains, the rays reflecting off the wet roads and moist greenery. But even more, I love when it “sunny rains” as my daughter and I call it. We often stop in our tracks to admire the beauty of God’s creation as we see vivid rainbows in the sky, as the drops glitter down through the sunlight.
In the PNW, we have false summers all throughout May and June. We never can quite believe that summer has actually arrived until the week of July 4th. That is when the warm, dry weather begins and stays through September. It can get hot, up to mid-nineties, and in unusual years it has even hit 100.
This year has been no different. Summer has inched its way in, and now with the 4th upon us, we can actually say IT’S SUMMER! I climb to my garden, snip off a bushel of lavender, and take in the sweet aroma of summer.
Summer comes with a lovely, clean slate kind of feeling, like anything is possible with a string of days ahead to be filled with outings, friends, and long, quiet days at home.
I like a mix of both. We have days filled with activity and going here and there, and today, like many, are just quiet. We linger over books and matcha green tea in the morning, paint our nails, do a craft, go on a walk, and watch a movie. Emmy is much younger than her brothers, who are now teenagers, so we have lots of time just us.
We live near the Puget Sound, so we spend a lot of time at local beaches. We lug out our shade tent, beach towels, and too many sand toys to count. We sweat in the sun, chat with our friends, and snack on cheese sticks and apples. We sip cold Spindrifts and maybe sneak in fro-yo on our way home.
These are the simple days. The days that I will miss when she grows up.
A Refresh Devotional: Grace in the Waiting
I have been working through a Bible Study with some gals from my church called Daughters of Grace by The Daily Grace Co. Each day highlights a woman from the Bible. This week we read about Eve, Sara, Rebekah, Hagar, and Rachel.
Do you know what they had in common?? Something we probably all struggle with?
Needing control. Comparison. Manipulation and impatience.
I don’t know about you, but I can relate.
They all took things into their own hands when they struggled to believe that God is who He says He is and why He wasn’t doing what He had promised in His perfect timing. Eve believed the serpent and ate of the fruit, even though she was told not to. Sara manipulated her circumstances to try and bring God’s promise to fruition way before it was time. Rebekah thought she knew what was best and took things into her own hands, and Rachel lived most of her life feeling less than.
We had a dynamic discussion about how to trust God when things don’t make sense.
How do we trust God when things just don’t make sense and we feel like we know better?
In 2 Corinthians 5:7, we read, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” Often in life, we can’t see past our current circumstances. We know what we want, but we step away from relying on the Lord and try to make things happen on our own. Much like Sara, we take things into our own hands, manipulating circumstances in hopes that all things will work out like we think they should. We have dreams, desires, longings that seem to just take too long…so we try to manifest them on our own. This only leads to mistakes, avoidable stress, and heartache.
In October 2022, I signed with a publisher in hopes that my book would be released in a year at the latest. It has been months and years of writing, working, waiting, trusting, and ultimately surrendering the outcome to the Lord. I have to be intentional about expressing my trust in the Lord and my trust in His perfect plan. I knew that even though I couldn’t see behind the scenes of all the delays and didn’t understand why it was taking so long, I ultimately knew that God had a perfect release date for me!
Walking by faith…not by sight.
I still wait. I still trust. When I get a release date, you will be the first to know!
Let’s Pray,
Lord, please forgive me for times when I get impatient and struggle to trust you in the waiting. Please give me peace and patience as I learn to trust you more. Come into the dark places of my heart that still struggle with control and place a calm in my spirit when I worry about outcomes. Lord, I want to trust you, but sometimes I simply don’t know how. Thank you for the beautiful examples of courageous women in the Bible who, although they took matters into their own hands, you still used their struggles and mistakes to bring about your purposes. I trust that you will do the same in my life.
In Your precious name we pray,
Amen
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With grace and gratitude,
Heidi