Pending…

Transaction pending.

I wondered if the order had gone through.  I had placed it five days ago, received the initial email with the aforementioned status: pending.  But there had been no further communications, no indication of shipping or processing.

I checked the account on the site.  Transaction pending, the website told me.

The transaction appeared to be pending on my bank account too, with the charge of $43.56 in limbo, and no indication that the order either had or had not been processed.  I waited a full seven days before I reached out to the customer service chat.

Hi, my order is showing as pending.  Will it be processed and shipped?  Is there some issue?

No, the order is currently pending and in process.  It will be shipped after that.

Do you know when that might be? 

              No.

How long do orders typically remain ‘pending’?

              Until they’re packed and shipped.

The website indicates all items will ship in three days.

              Yes, once they’ve been processed, but your order is pending.

Eventually, the transaction did process, and the order transformed from pending to shipped.  My items arrived, albeit three weeks later than I anticipated—although I never did find out the exact reason for the delay.

Such an irrationally annoying state, “pending.”

Something good will happen.  The process will complete.  Action will occur.  But when or where or how is anyone’s guess.  So perhaps it’s appropriate that it feels, of late, that pending is what has been stamped over my entire spiritual walk in every way imaginable.

That old frustration and thorn in the flesh has circled back around again to torture me.  Will it resolve itself?  Will it leave?  Will I overcome it by the grace of God?

Pending.

Will I ever grow into the kind of believer who stops resorting to bad thought patterns and behaviors when I know—when I know that I know—what the truth is and how God is and how He operates?

Pending.

Will the good work that God began in me be completed?  Yes, of course, but when?

Pending.

I have never understood why people view Christianity as a Pollyanna-esque religion.  Yes, God promises redemption and fruition and a great grand plan and that everything will be all sorted out…

…eventually.  Not now.  And let me tell you, knowing something great is on the way does not always alleviate the frustrations of the present moment.  I know that one day I will see the face of God and I will be redeemed into the fulfillment of who God made me to be.  I will see my mother.  I will know the great sea of God’s faithful people.  I will live in joy and purpose and peace eternally. 

But also, today, I have serious anxiety about an upcoming event, my husband is recovering from Covid (it’s still out there!) and I have more tasks to do than time to complete them.  And it is awful hard to connect God’s promises of what will be to what is happening right now.  Pending is the way of faith.  It also frustrates me to death.

And yet.

Recently, I went to see a wise colleague and mentor of mine about an upcoming opportunity. I’ve mentioned before that I am in a period of much exciting possibility for my career; it seemed to me that this opportunity was a change to take the bull by the horns and show what I can do.  I asked my colleague if my plan was a sound one.

“Don’t do anything,” he told me hurriedly, because another call was waiting.  “I’ll explain later.”

I was a little miffed.  My whole career is—well, pending.  I didn’t see any harm in moving the process along.  But when he called later, he laughed.  “Don’t do anything,” he told me, “because things are happening and you don’t want to interrupt them.  Just sit tight.  You don’t have to act.  Everything’s already happening without your help.”

I didn’t know anything was happening at all.  Pending is all that’s visible to me right now, in many ways.  But behind the scenes there’s much action, of the sort that I’ve prayed for, and entirely outside of my awareness.  One day, all of a sudden, that pending status will change and I’ll not have seen it coming.  God is moving without my permission, knowledge, or engagement, as He always does.

So much of what we do is our desperate desire for reassurance.

We want to know if God is paying attention.  We want to know if he is really aware of what is going on down here.  We want to know if he knows how frustrated or hurt or patient or good we are or how much we are trying.  We want to know if he’s going to do something. 

And a lot of times, wanting to know if He’s going to do something is really wondering if He cares.

And He does, of course.  He just reckons time differently, to the extent He must reckon it at all, and He knows exactly how it’s all going to go.  Knowing we didn’t, knowing we’d ask, He gave us His Son, left us with His Word, placed His church, and in spite of everything left us this world strewn with extravagant sunsets and small cotton-tailed bunnies and petrichor and thunder. 

Oblivious, we stare at the screen.  Pending.  We click the mouse, refresh the website.  Pending.  We call customer support, look up our account number.  Pending.  Pending.

“What’s going on here?” we write.  “Is this going to resolve itself?  Am I going to live in this tension forever?” 

And what we receive in return is not resolution but I love you.  And of the two, it is clear to me, God knows we need love more than what we think we want in our answered questions and resolved tensions. 

Pending in love.

Pending, in love.

We wait and we learn to be beloved.