A few years back, when our son Jonah turned twelve, my husband gave him a used PC for his birthday.
It was a great gift, or at least it was supposed to be. The problem was that the computer would shut down automatically, and every time Jonah tried to play on it, something would go wrong.
It was frustrating for our little guy.
So every once in a while he would ask, “When can I get a new one that works?”
Of course, our answer was always the same.
“You just have to wait.”
I would use every opportunity to remind him that waiting, even when it seemed impossible, was something we would have to learn more than once in this life.
“We are always learning to be patient, Jonah,” was my usual spiel.
He would shrug his shoulders, make some sarcastic remark, and then move on.
I didn't hear much more about it.
In fact, the only time the computer would really come up was when he would turn it on after months of not using it, get a good fifteen or thirty minutes of playing in, and then it would start acting up again.
Eventually, Jonah stopped turning it on.
He decided to let it go.
If he got a new computer someday, great.
But he stopped complaining about it.
Year after year, he would occasionally mention that he wanted one, but the sarcasm and frustration seemed to disappear. He wasn't constantly asking when it would happen.
He had learned to wait.
And then, after we finally got Jonah a new computer, we did what any perfectly reasonable parents would do with the old, unreliable computer...
We gave it to our youngest son, Noah. 😂
His first question was, “Why do I always have to get the used one?”
Well.
There are certain parenting moments where you realize you've just been handed another opportunity to teach the exact same lesson.
We had our little talk with Noah. I won't go into all the lessons we broke down for him, but let's just say Noah was not nearly as graceful with the waiting game as his older brother.
Jonah had simply stopped using the computer when it didn't satisfy him.
Noah, on the other hand, actually wanted to play his games.
So even though the computer was slow, and even though it couldn't keep up with the speed his games required, he kept using it.
And every single time he turned it on, we heard about it.
“This thing is so slow.”
“It keeps messing up.”
“It can't even keep up with my game.”
Poor Noah.
His waiting was proving to be far more unbearable than Jonah's.
But waiting was waiting.
Jonah waited quietly.
Noah waited loudly.
Neither one got the new computer simply because they were tired of waiting for it.
And isn't that sometimes how it is with us?
Some of us wait quietly.
Some of us remind God every five minutes that we are still waiting.
Some of us try to forget the thing we have been asking for.
Others of us keep staring at the broken, slow, frustrating thing in front of us, wondering why God hasn't replaced it yet.
But whether we wait gracefully or whether we complain our way through it, the lesson remains.
We still have to wait.
As part of our homeschool, both of our boys are required to write in journals. I told them that I would respect their privacy and wouldn't read them unless they invited me to. If they wanted me to read an entry, they could simply let me know.
They both invite me to read every entry.
One particular night, I read Jonah's entry for the day.
It wasn't long.
It simply said:
“I've been thinking about my PC a lot. I can wait, but I feel like I've been waiting too long.”
And there was something incredibly honest about his words, because at that point, it had been about five years.
Five years is a long time to wait for something when you're a kid.
And yet, he had learned something.
He could wait.
But then there was the “but.”
I can wait, but I feel like I've been waiting too long.
And honestly?
I understood him.
I took his journal entry to my husband, and we shared a laugh, because we both could picture him saying these words with a sarcastic tone. Then we started talking about what Jonah had written.
We decided to reach out to my parents and ask if they could help us with the little bit we still needed to have a computer built for him.
Sure enough, they chipped in.
Together, we were finally able to build him a great computer.
Later, I told Jonah how much I appreciated what he had written.
I appreciated his honesty.
He had recognized that he had learned to wait. He wasn't demanding. He wasn't throwing a fit. He wasn't pretending that waiting was easy.
He could honestly say, “I can wait.”
But he could also honestly say, “I feel like I've been waiting too long.”
And as I thought about it, I realized how often I say the same thing to God.
When I pray, I can be thankful for what He is teaching me in the waiting, while at the same time feeling the weight of how long I have been waiting.
I can be learning patience and still become discouraged.
I can trust God and still wonder when.
I can know that He is faithful and still have moments when my heart whispers, Lord, how much longer?
I don't think we need to pretend those feelings aren't there.
Perhaps the lesson of waiting isn't simply learning how to sit still until God finally gives us what we have been asking for.
Perhaps the waiting itself is where He is teaching us something we could never learn if we received the answer immediately.
Recently, I listened to Professor John Lennox speak about waiting on the Lord. He was talking particularly about what happens when we sit with the Word of God and ask Him to speak to us.
We ask our questions.
And then we wait.
But how often do we give God time to answer?
Can we sit quietly with a passage of Scripture without rushing through it?
Can we read something and allow ourselves to remain there for a while, rather than immediately moving on to the next thing?
Before we can understand something, sometimes we first have to be willing to sit with it.
And there is something about waiting that reveals what is happening inside of us.
Waiting exposes our impatience.
It exposes our desire to control the outcome.
It exposes our discouragement.
It can even expose the places where we have quietly decided that God should have answered us by now.
But waiting can also produce something beautiful.
It can teach us to listen.
It can teach us to trust.
It can teach us to remain when we would rather run ahead.
It can teach us that silence does not mean God is absent.
And perhaps most importantly, it can teach us that God's timing is not made better by our anxiety about it.
Jonah didn't need to pretend he wasn't tired of waiting.
He simply needed to learn how to wait without allowing the waiting to become the center of his life.
And maybe that's something I am still learning too.
Yes, ask the Lord your questions.
Bring Him the things that weigh on your heart.
Tell Him what you desire.
Tell Him when you are discouraged.
Tell Him when you are tired of waiting.
But then...
wait for the reply.
Because sometimes the answer we are waiting for is not the only thing God intends to give us.
Sometimes He is using the waiting to make us ready for the answer.
Sometimes He is teaching us something we could only learn by remaining there.
And sometimes, after what feels like far too long, we look back and realize that God wasn't doing nothing while we waited.
He was doing something in us.
So if you are waiting today, I don't want to give you a shallow, “Just be patient.”
I know waiting can feel like too long.
But don't waste the waiting.
Sit with Him.
Listen.
Learn.
Let Him search your heart.
And trust that even here, even now, He is not wasting your time.
The psalmist said:
“I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.” — Psalm 40:1
You may feel like you have been waiting too long.
But you are not waiting alone.
And the God who hears you is still at work. 🖤