Waiting on the Lord

First of all, I have to tell you that some of these words came from someone else, I can't honestly take credit for them.

I found a great book a few weeks ago, one of those books you finish reading and want to immediately start over again. I found it at Macey's, it's published by Deseret Book, so I'm sure you can find it there. And you should too.

I Hate It When Exercise Is the Answer: A Fitness Program for the Soul
By: Emily Watts

I've heard her speak and have bought several of her books for my mom and sister, this is the first I've bought for myself. It won't be the last.

In a chapter 25 called "Wisdom from Gracie: An Exercise in Waiting on the Lord" the author tells of finding a postcard with this saying attributed to Gracie Allen: "Never put a period where God has placed a comma."

"Never put a period where God has placed a comma." It had immediate appeal for me as a person for whom punctuation has been a profession, but its meaning has since gone far beyond the 'editing connection.'

I like closure. I like to put the period on the sentence of a situation and move on. But life doesn't work that way very often. The Lord frequently invites us to trust Him, to hold on, to endure, to wait and see what He has in mind. As Psalm 27:14 tells us, 'Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.'

One of my problems is that, when my patience is tried, sometimes I attempt to jump too quickly to the hindsight. I trust that things will work out all right, and I can wait a little while for events to unfold, but often I try to put the period in places that were obviously meant for a comma. I think I see God's purposes when really we're not there yet."

Patience and waiting on the Lord are difficult for my finite mind to grasp, even more difficult to execute. And the concept of periods vs. commas becomes increasingly ironic to me when literal periods continue to dash my hopes of ever making it beyond the never ending comma of infertility.

(I swear this post started out as a positive idea... where did I get off track?)

Sigh... how to get back on track?

I've been trying to decide what my life would be like if I could remind myself that "...this too shall pass." So I am trying to be patient, because I'm certain that's one of the attributes my Father in Heaven is trying desperately to teach me. The idea is much simpler than the execution.