Waiting For New Baby

Do you remember how agonizing waiting used to be when you were a kid? We were always waiting for something, weren't we? We were waiting until it was time to get up from our naps, waiting until we were old enough to go to school, waiting for school to get out at 3:00, waiting for the summer, waiting until we could graduate. I even had a hard time waiting until I got married!

One of the things I am extremely grateful to God for is the time he has given me to learn how to wait patiently. It was not an easy lesson to learn, and it took me over a year to understand what waiting patiently even meant... but now that I am farther along in my walk in this area than I was a few years ago, I think there is so much to be said about not only learning how to wait patiently, but also enjoying the seasons of waiting in our lives. When we live our whole lives thinking I can't wait until... you fill in the blank: how about I go on vacation... I get out of debt... I finally retire... when we go through our lives thinking this way we miss something so important. We miss today.

I think it's funny that God chose to tell us in His Word, "...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matt. 6:34)

So I am not worrying about tomorrow. I am enjoying today. If you catch me on the wrong evening I will be saying how much I want this kid out of me! Those are nights when I'm throwing up like mad and my back hurts and my hips hurt and I'm having lots of practice contractions. I am human, and I do get sick of things in the present just like everybody else.

But most of the time these last few days before my new baby is born, you will find me enjoying myself. I am so thrilled to spend these last few days with my little Micah. He has grown up so fast, and this season in my life is almost over. Lord-willing I will never only have one child alive again, so I am cherishing every waking hour I have with just Micah. (I am also pregnant, so I am also really cherishing every non-waking hour with Micah!)

In the past few days I have made to-do list after to-do list and I finished another one off today. I already have around ten things lined up in my head that I want to put on my next to-do list, and I am so thankful to God that I still have the energy and motivation (most of the time) to keep marking things off.

Here is a gimps into my life:
Tonight I wanted to cross off the last item on my to-do list: ironing the curtains for New Baby's room. Josh had already set the ironing board up for me, something I always struggle with, so all I had to do was get out the iron and heat it up. Micah was already asleep. I turned on one of my favorite cds (Ray Boltz), took down the two curtains I wanted to iron and got to work. Ironing is great. There is instant gratification. I just loved getting to see the wrinkles press out of those curtains. The smell from the hot iron filled my bathroom and it made me never want to stop! I enjoyed everything about that measly, mundane task of ironing.

If we want to look at the every-glorious, seemingly always better "someday" that this world always seems to put on a pedestal, let me tell you how I see someday: Someday my babies will be grown and gone. I will not need to be ironing curtains for their bedrooms. Someday I may not be able to afford curtains for my child's bedroom. Someday I may no longer be able to physically complete the task of ironing. Someday I may no longer be able to see to watch those wrinkles fall out under the hot iron. And so while I'm ironing I am praising God. I am thanking him for the opportunity to get to iron those silly curtains. I am thanking him for the good night's rest he allowed me to get last night and the nap I got to sneak in with my husband this afternoon so that I had the energy to iron so late in the evening. (Oh yes, 9:00 is late!) I am thanking him for getting to text back and forth with my mom telling her how much fun I'm having ironing.  I am enjoying the way I am spending this particular 20 minutes in my life while I wait for New Baby to come.

So let me encourage you- if you find yourself always waiting for things in your life to get better, just stop it. They're not going to. Instead, I encourage you to look around you and find all of those wonderful things in your life that are going right RIGHT NOW and offer up some sacrifices of praise and gratitude for them. Our God is great and he cares about every flower he creates and every fly we want to smash. He cares about you too, and he wants you to enjoy whatever season he is bringing you through right now.