Patience

Waiting has got to be some kind of torture.  When you know something exciting is going to happen and the only thing standing in your way is time, there is just no words to explain the agony!

I was sitting with my youngest daughter, Kennedy, on the sidewalk watching bees land on the flowers.  I called my older daughter over and said, “Come here and look at the bumblebees.” She ran over, plopped down, looked once and replied, “I can’t wait this long, Mom.”  It had been 5 seconds!  But she’s the product of an instant generation that can communicate across the world in real time.  Waiting is not her specialty. 

When I was a kid, I can remember sitting for a long time on the dock with my dad waiting for the muskrats to come.  He would say, “If you’re real quiet and real still, you’ll see them.  They will swim right by with a mouthful of grass to take back to their dens.  Just wait.”  And I would.  Alone in the cool, Montana night, mosquitoes biting at me, I would wait.  And sure enough, I got just what I expected.  His little brown head would come swimming by just out of the water and then jerk quickly down into the creek’s edge to disappear into his home.

Starting North Creek Church has been this odd combination of intense, never ending, all consuming work, and this other odd side called “waiting”.  Waiting for people to hear about how great it is and come.  Waiting for the right people to plug into the right ministries so that everyone can flourish.  Waiting for the finances to be there to go to the next level.  Waiting…waiting…waiting.  What do you do when you’ve done everything you know how to do?  You wait.

The only reason I’m okay with the torture of it all is because of the very principle I learned back when I was a kid…if you’ll wait, you’ll get just what you expected.  Mark and I expect tens of thousands of people being changed by Jesus.  For that, I will wait.