Remember that in a period of waiting, when the door is closed, that doesn't mean you're out of the will of God, it means you're right in the will of God. The open door is the exception in life, and the rest is filled with red lights. Our problem is often not our weakness, but our competence. Our professional expertise, our brains; we are highly capable, we don't really need Him... [Except He'll make sure we eventually see that we most certainly do need him.]
We're to wait in stability and confidence. Silently.
Waiting on God is resting, not worrying.
--From Tree of Lifes for 2000, Robert R. McLaughlin, p82
Reading these concepts I can see the purpose in what I'm experiencing. The approach of the deadline makes those waiting periods that occur in the midst of the rewriting process harder. There is always the temptation to look into the future and try to put it all together, to see how much work there is and how I'm going to do it all -- delusional for sure, since I really don't know at this point. (I'm actually thinking that I'm not going to have to go through all the events that I set down in my first draft, that things are going to be cut out and consolidated, but right now, I don't know which ones)
But in waiting under these conditions, and doing it confidently and in rest, I would truly be giving it to him. I can trust Him to handle it all in accordance with His plan, not mine. Trust Him to move me to work when it's time and relax while I wait. If I was waiting for someone to arrive at the house, I would consciously dink around with unimportant tasks so that when the time comes and the arrive I could drop it all and be ready to visit with them...
Some of the things I turn to during the blank, waiting periods really are no different from the dinking around one might do while waiting for a guest to arrive.
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