In His Time

If I started at the beginning, I'd have to tell you about the time I was deep in prayer, praising and confessing and petitioning and suddenly, very strongly, felt God impress upon my heart, "You will have a daughter." It was startling because I wasn't praying about children. In fact, at that moment, it came so out of left field that my eyes flew open and I furrowed my brow and goosebumps crept up all over my arms and I had to fight the urge to sprint out of the room. My ears pounded and I started to sweat. I didn't run. I thought of young Samuel and Eli telling him to answer the Lord the next time he heard his name being called. I switched the focus of my prayer completely to what I thought I'd heard. But less out of obedience and more because what I thought I'd heard wasn't even what I wanted.

I mean, yes, tea parties sound like fun.

Pink ad nauseam is fantastic right up to the ad nauseam part at which point one switches her daughter into a football jersey.

Hair bows.

The mall.

But what I wanted was to feed only TWO TEENAGE BOYS WHO WILL EAT LIKE HUNGRY LONG HAUL TRUCK DRIVERS and not also have to feed their sister. What I wanted was to figure out how to stop yelling at the two kids I already have and maybe not add anymore bodies into the mix. Because the good Lord knows there is a list of patient and amazing mothers out there and I am NOT ON IT. That scene in Mom's Night Out where Allison has eye make up everywhere and the paper towel dispenser won't work and she has a confrontation with it, well, that scene was taken straight from my life.

So I didn't really want that thing that I felt God tell me. I asked him for clarification. I covered all my journalism bases with the WHO and the WHAT and the WHERE and the WHEN and the WHY and the HOW and do you know what? He did not answer. It just hung, right there in my prayer closet. "You will have a daughter." No explanation. No clarification. Nothing more and nothing less.

I did what any reasonable pastor's wife would do with that information. I zipped my lip and said NOTHING. I returned to it in prayer, begging for more information and receiving nothing. And so I took that one sentence and I turned it over again and again on my tongue and it began to take root and I treasured it in my heart. Because in this life there are all the long hours of frustration and correction and redirection but there are also the moments full of smiles and joy and dreams come true and it is not a giant leap from content to being willing to give all that I am, runny eye make up and all, to another child.

I pondered this. I did not speak it. I prayerfully considered it for a very long time. And then I opened my mouth and I shared it with my husband. I confessed that I didn't know what it meant. It could be an overseas adoption. It could be a spiritual daughter or a daughter-in-law. It could be ten years from now when we adopt a waiting teenager. Or two years from now. I had no earthly idea. I just thought it was finally time that he knew.

The only thing that truly mattered to me was the will of God and I did not want to try to rush it or push my own agenda. In His time, He would reveal it to me and I would see His fingerprints all over the situation and be content to move forward.

In. His. Time.