He Longs With Me

For the past several weeks, I've been meeting with other women from church and working through Beth Moore's study on Esther.  It has been so relevant to every woman participating, on different levels and in different areas of our lives.

This past session's DVD, Beth Moore said something so simply profound, which just spoke to my heart, and I felt hot tears on my cheeks. 

She read Isaiah 30:18: "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion.  For the Lord is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for Him."  She said, "A wait without longing is just a passing of time."  Then she pointed out that God is longing for His plans for us to come to fruition, just as we are.

So, when I'm missing my kids, wondering why paperwork that was supposed to be here 4 weeks ago still isn't here, why people who traveled after us are already sending back to our kids' country paperwork we haven't even gotten to start on, waiting for unanswered questions to be answered (here on Earth and from Heaven), I can rest assured that God is longing for these things just as much as little itty-bitty me.  He's excited about our gotcha day, anticipating our kids being orphans no more.

Before you think I've become patient, I'm on the verge of a big cry fest.  We've been waiting 6 weeks for papers that were supposed to be here in only 2, and I don't even know when they'll be here.  At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if our paperwork was lost with the postcard that never arrived.  (We mailed a postcard to the kids while we were in-country, and haven't gotten it yet.)  There are families who traveled after us that are now over a month ahead of us, because their immigration paperwork is finished, and we can't even start ours without the missing documents.  And I can't get an answer on where the paperwork is.  So, I'm most definitely failing in the patience department.

But those words were reassuring, as Scripture always is during my frequent moments of humanness.  And I'll take every bit of reassurance I can get when I'm getting ready to take away my toddler's award of "Best Tantrum Ever."