What do I do “While In Waiting”? It’s a question I have often asked myself over the years. I have much more free focus than women with children. I have skills, talents, passions but always felt a constant pull to live on the edge of my seat as though my family would expand at any moment. Like I shouldn’t commit to anything big because what if I got pregnant?
I am here to tell you that is NOT a way of life. Over and over I found myself disappointed and wasting time. So many opportunities passed me by. I was so tunnel visioned on the what ifs that I missed a part of my journey. I do regret having done this but I’ve certainly learned from it.
Remember in this post when I explained the valley? How when we are in a valley, we need to stop and smell the roses? That we need to pay attention to what God has for us now? This is what I’m talking about.
For 8.5 years, I held back on commitments, opportunities, on LIFE! God promises that He knows the plans He has for us. They include peace, hope and a future. {Jeremiah 29:11} Not one life He sets out to waste.
After countless hours of prayer and study and keeping my eyes wide open for answers, I finally found the perfect mentor for this portion of my journey. She is nameless but anything but ordinary. She’s known as The Shunammite Woman. Her story can be found in 2 Kings 4:8-17.
She too was a woman in waiting. She had an internal struggle with infertility but that didn’t stop her from being effective and productive. She kept herself busy and distracted from the temptations of depression, stagnancy and the like. She saw she had passions and talents and used them.
She had a heart for humanity and loved to use her skills for hospitality. She was a homemaker it seems and used her resources of time and a home to aid a traveler. A traveler who once was a stranger but became a regular guest in her home. She even went as far as building an addition on her roof to give this traveler his own quarters.
I could go on and on about this woman and her story but I will save some for later posts.
After reading this woman’s story, I knew that God had more for me than what I was going through. A few months later, this blog was laid on my heart and I had an urgency to reach others struggling with it. I’ve wanted to so badly to give my fellow Infertle Myrtles a hug and big ugly cry because the struggle is truly that real.
I will leave you with this. An excerpt from my journal dated November 28, 2014; the day I got my answer and discovered that God intends for us to be active while we are waiting. This was written 7 months after publicly coming out of the infertility closet and 5 months before this blog was birthed in my heart. God is working even when we are in the dark. Even when our prayers go unanswered He hears and is working.
I came across a revelation from the Lord regarding my purpose and grievances. Through researching scripture about childlessness, I came across the story about the Shunammite woman. She was childless but bore a son… But what the Lord opened my eyes to in the verses leading up to this is what really caught my attention.
Learning that this woman was barren but yet she spent her life serving the Lord is I feel what my answer is. I think the Lord has told me a child is coming. But here in this season He wants my attention on Him. The Shunammite woman opened her home to God’s people. She expressed her skill in hospitality to minister to Elisha. She gave him a place to stay in ways that were far above the call of duty.
Lord you used this woman to serve in extraordinary ways while she was free from distraction. The growing of her family came later. Is this what you have for me?
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