Waiting on God without going numb

The scan results are still not back. The phone that was supposed to ring about the job has been dark for three weeks. The years of wanting a husband or a wife, or a child, have turned into a decade. You have prayed about it so many times that the words have worn smooth, and you are beginning to notice that the safest way to get through another month is simply to stop wanting.

Here is the answer, and it is not a quick one. God does not ask you to wait by going dead inside. He asks you to wait the way a watchman waits for morning: awake, looking, sure that the sun is coming even while it is still dark. Numbness feels like protection, but it is actually a kind of giving up, a decision not to hope so that you cannot be hurt. The Father offers something harder and better. He offers to keep your heart soft while you wait, and to be the one you are waiting for, not only the one you are waiting on.

Waiting is something you do, not something done to you

We tend to think of waiting as empty time, the gap between the real events. Scripture treats it as an activity, with its own posture and its own courage.

Still I am certain to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait patiently for the LORD!

Psalm 27:13–14

Be strong and courageous. Those are the words spoken to soldiers before a battle, and here they are given to someone doing nothing more dramatic than waiting. That tells you something. Waiting well takes strength. It takes the decision, made again each morning, to keep your eyes open and your expectation fixed on the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living, here, in this life, not only in the next.

The psalmist in another place compares the waiting soul to men on a city wall in the last hours of the night.

I wait for the LORD; my soul does wait, and in His word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning—more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Psalm 130:5–6

A watchman does not doubt that morning is coming. He has seen it come every day of his life. What he does not know is exactly when the first gray will show on the eastern edge. So he stays at his post and keeps looking. That is the picture: not passive, not numb, not pacing, but watchful, with the hope resting on His word rather than on how the sky looks right now.

The One you are waiting on does not get tired

The long wait wears a person down. There is nothing wrong with you for being exhausted by it. But it helps to remember who is on the other side of the wait.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out. He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:28–31

Read the whole passage, and notice the order. First, who God is: everlasting, Creator, never weary, past our understanding. Then what He does for the faint: gives power, increases strength. Then the promise for those who wait on Him. The renewing comes from Him, not from you gritting your teeth. Waiting on the LORD is not the same as waiting on the outcome. You can wait on Him tonight, and receive strength tonight, even if the letter still does not come tomorrow.

Keep the heart soft by telling Him the truth

The surest way to go numb is to stop saying how it actually is. You give God the polite version, the one with the edges filed off, and slowly the real feelings go underground. The Bible’s answer to that is lament: honest, sometimes raw complaint, addressed to God, inside the relationship rather than outside it.

Lamentations was written in the ruins of a city. Its writer had watched everything he loved burn. And yet it contains this.

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

Lamentations 3:25–26

It is good to wait quietly. But look where those lines sit. They come after two chapters of weeping, and after the writer has said out loud that he felt God had walled him in and made him a target. Quiet waiting in Scripture is not the quiet of someone who has shut down. It is the quiet that comes after the crying has been done in God’s hearing. If you want to wait without going numb, you have to keep talking to Him, and you have to let it be true.

Tell Him you are tired. Tell Him it feels unfair. Tell Him you are scared of what the results will say, or that you are starting to believe you will always be alone. The psalms are full of exactly this, which means He has already heard worse than anything you are about to say, and He kept it in His book.

What He has promised will come

The prophet Habakkuk stood on his own watchtower, demanding to know why God was slow, and this was the answer he was told to write down.

For the vision awaits an appointed time; it testifies of the end and does not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it, since it will surely come and will not delay.

Habakkuk 2:3

Though it lingers, wait for it. God does not deny that it lingers. He does not pretend the wait is short or the delay imaginary. He says that what He has appointed will come at its appointed time, and it will not be late by His clock, even when it is unbearably late by yours.

This needs to be said carefully. Not every specific thing you are waiting for is something God has promised. He has not promised you this job, or a spouse by a certain age, or a clean scan. What He has promised is Himself, His goodness to those who wait for Him, strength for the faint, and a day when every tear is wiped away. Those promises are certain. The others you can ask for, and hope for, and grieve if they do not come, while the certain ones hold you up.

Small faithful things while you wait

Waiting well is made of small acts, most of them ordinary.

Set a time each day, even ten minutes, to bring the specific thing to God and to say how you feel about it today. Then leave it there until tomorrow. Keep a page where you write what you asked for and the date, so that you can see later how He answered, and so the waiting has a record instead of a blur.

Read Psalm 130 aloud when the numbness starts to creep in. It is short. Let its watchman do his work on you.

Do the next ordinary thing well. Turn up to work. Cook the meal. Keep the friendship. Serve in the church you have. Waiting on God has never meant standing still; Joseph kept the prison running while he waited, and Ruth went out to glean.

And pray something like this:

If the waiting has begun to take your sleep or your appetite for weeks at a time, or you notice you cannot feel anything at all, tell your doctor as well as your pastor. That is not a failure of faith. It is wisdom, and God works through both.

Find people who will wait with you. A church where you are known can carry a long wait far better than you can carry it alone, and in the meantime there is an article for the nights when no one calls.

Morning is coming. Stay at your post.