Have you ever been on a flight that had to circle for a while around an airport waiting for the pilot to get permission to land?  Or maybe you’ve been stuck in a construction zone, and a man with a sign and a walkie talkie seems to hold all the power as to when you get to move along.  These can be frustrating moments…

What about the big things?  Times when your life is on hold… You are waiting for a test result to come back, praying through a difficult circumstance of a loved one, waiting for the tide to turn on a relationship… We feel barren, exposed, vulnerable.   The calendar turns and days wane into months, and months morph into years. These seasons are hard and go on interminably long.

I have a dear friend who reminds me of the saying “It’ll all be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”  It’s not Biblical, but then… Couldn’t you just hear Paul saying something like this while he was being held in prison? Or how about when he was shipwrecked on some island?  I bet he had something he quipped to himself as he wondered at how God was going to work it out for him.

I live my life by Romans 8:28 – “And we know in all things God works for the good of those who love him…”  I believe this, right down to my soul.  The hard part, however, has come with the understanding that there is no time designation in the Scripture.   Wouldn’t it be great if we could know how long it takes God to do this?   Are we talking days God, or decades?   If only we knew. 

We have all gone through times when we question if things will ever turn around. Circumstances and situations groan on, seemingly without progress.  We feel forgotten by God.  It’s times like these that we can become so burdened from carrying the weight of a need, a healing, or a resolution, that we can get weary.  I know… 

To be honest, this has been my truth of late.   It seems that in certain life issues, not only am I in a holding pattern, but my “fake it ‘til you make it face” isn’t exactly cutting it anymore either.  I feel my spirit ebbing in ways I could not anticipate.

And then, like Cher slapping Nicholas Cage in “Moonstruck,” I tell myself something that we all need to hear from time to time.  “Snap out of it!”  The moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie, and that’s it!  That’s when I remind myself of the amore of God and what He’s done for me.

God sees me.  He hears me.  He doesn’t mind that my prayers are the same ones over and over.  He knows I want to know “when” and “how” and “why,” but He tells me just enough to let me know that even though I don’t know these things, I do know “who.”  I know He is in control, not me. 

We can’t determine God’s time.  We can only determine by our faith if we are going to hold on long enough to see what He will do   He’s the God of miracles, and yes – He’s also a God of mystery.   Things don’t always happen as we pray for them to be.  People fall out of relationship with us, loved ones don’t always get healed, we deal and press through things we never signed up for… That’s life.  

But God is God, and nothing – absolutely nothing – is impossible for Him.

All we can do sometimes is pray and wait and pray some more until, in God’s way and His timing, it’s okay again in the end.  We just have to hold on and believe.

He does work all things together for our good.  That’s His promise to us.

Hang in there, baby.   He’s working it out… I know He is.

It’s only a matter of time.

 Mary Bryant is the author of "When He Walks Away… Hearing God When Your Husband Leaves Your Marriage,” a 5-Star Rated book available on Amazon