Wait And See What I Will Do

Wait and see what I will do.

It was 7pm, and 29 degrees.  I had taken a walk in the dark against my better judgment in the middle of winter in January because I needed somewhere, anywhere, to be that wasn’t my own head.

I was trying to be faithful.  I was trying to grow closer to God in trials.  I was trying not to fall into my default mode of wailing at God whenever circumstances didn’t meet expectations. Aware that many evangelicals have fallen prey to a soft, spiritual version of the prosperity gospel, I had determined to myself at the advent of the new year that I would instead commit myself to suffer well.  Or as well as I could, anyway.

I felt that I had a little bit of practice, after my mother’s eight months of miserable sickness and eventual passing, and the year of grief that followed, which also happened to be the year of my career turning into a slow-motion train wreck and the breaking of several friendships-that-weren’t.

And then I got food poisoning at the end of the year.

And then in the new year, RSV or bronchitis, or whatever bacterial whatsit that knocked me flat on my back for almost an entire month.

After that my beloved cat—the one who, whenever I think I am doing a good job of being sad without showing it, will come and sit on my stomach and purr loudly until I start smiling—was diagnosed with a heart problem.

And so on that particular Friday night, I was walking the neighborhood the night before my cat’s visit with a specialist Saturday, blowing clouds of steam into the air and trying to talk myself into the right attitude to have about something else maybe going wrong.

“I just need you to help me,” I muttered to God, and kept moving faster since I’d forgotten not put on anything decently warm and my legs were getting cold.  “Help me to have the right attitude, and keep the faith in all this mess.”

Wait and see what I will do.

Sometimes people ask me what I mean when I say “God speaks to me.”  This is what I mean.  I receive a thought that is not mine.  It’s often, when it happens, a response to my thoughts, a counter or a supplement to something I am running over in my head.  It comes notably, like a tiny little revelation or realization, the sort that often makes me physically pause in place.

And that is what I received: wait and see what I will do.

I do my best to be discerning.  I am well aware that not every thought I have, or perhaps even that feels like it comes from God, is indeed from God.  But in these cases—where the thought either aligns with or does not contradict Scripture, when the response is made directly to my appeal to God in prayer, and when the Holy Spirit seems to offer what is useful for my correction or growth—I accept that it is.

I wish I could explain to you how gentle of a plea it was.

As though God knew and understood very well how exhausted I’ve been and how much all of this has been to bear.  As though he wanted to show me what I did not see: which is that in my efforts to suffer well I had somehow also assumed I’d always be suffering, that I’d lost faith in anything good that might happen.  That I had committed myself to a slog of a journey without even accounting for hope.

Don’t assume it will all go wrong.  And don’t assume it will all go well.  Just wait.  Know that God is present and that God will act.  That God is acting.  That God will be in the mix of what is coming and because of His presence, will change it in some unutterable, mysterious way.

“Okay,” I said to the dark.  “…okay.”

And so I committed myself to wait, and to see what God would do.   Now I want to tell you what God has done:

My cat does have a heart condition.  It’s congenital.  But we caught it so early he has no symptoms, needs no medication, and in every other way is perfectly fine.  The vet sent us home to watch and to wait, and he gets to enjoy being a cat until his yearly visit to the specialist every year to see how things are going.

A week after the recovery of my cat, I received a call apropos of nothing at work: I am being promoted into a new position that will solve 90% of the career struggles I have been having.

The same day I received the work call, my father became quite significantly ill  He refused to go to the doctor despite my pleas and the pleas of others.  Helpless and powerless, I simply prayed—and waited.  His issues dissipated as suddenly as they appeared, to my enormous gratitude to God; he has an appointment with a specialist in two weeks.

As for me, it’s like a shell around me has been cracked open and dropped away.

I find myself thinking frequently of the Valley of Bones in Ezekiel 37.  God escorts Ezekiel to the valley and leads him back and forth.  “Son of man,” he asks, “can these bones live?”

Ezekiel says, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

His answer is so measured.  It is my answer, frequently.  God, you alone know.  Will you answer the prayer or permit me to endure a trial?  Will this go well or badly?  Will a solution appear, or must I continue to approach the problem in faith?  Will I be weeping or rejoicing? 

Sovereign Lord, you alone know.

I have learned too much over the past two years to depend with any certainty on circumstance.  Everything that has happened has thoroughly introduced me to, and led me through, the contemplation of theodicy.  I know there is much I will not and cannot understand.  I understood too, now, that just as spells of darkness seem to fall over our lives, spells of light and joy will too.  I can’t predict it.  God alone knows.

But I keep thinking back to that quiet, metaphorical touch on the hand I received that night.  The reminder not to get too caught up in my own sense of what is coming or what I need to be prepared to endure.  I had out my mourning clothes and God opened the door instead to let the light in.  

Who knows what will happen next?

Only God knows.  So I will wait.  I’ll just wait, to see what He will do.