Don’t Waste Your Waiting

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Betsy Childs Howard
Hello, we are so glad that you’re here, and I know you like we have probably been rushing around, so please relax, take a deep breath, and we’re going to talk about how to not waste your waiting. But first, I want to thank Crossway for sponsoring this breakout. Crossway is a nonprofit ministry that publishes gospel-centered Bible-based content that seeks to honor our Savior and serve His church. And my name is Betsy Child Howard. I am a mom, I’m an editor for the Gospel Coalition. I live in Birmingham, Alabama, and I’ve written a number of children’s books, and I’ve also written a book called Seasons of Waiting, and I’m very happy to be here today with our president, Mark Rogop.

Mark Vroegop
Thank you. Yeah, Mark Vrogop, pastoral ministry for 30 years or so, and now pleased to be the president of the Gospel Coalition, and really excited to be talking about everyone’s favorite subject, which is waiting, and to do so with Betsy, who wrote an unbelievably helpful book that was a huge fan of, as I was putting together my book, and so it’s fun to be able to do this together. So we’re going to have a great time. So thank you.

Betsy Childs Howard
To start off, would you define waiting? Because I like the way that you define

Mark Vroegop
it. Yeah, waiting is bad. No, I mean, it is. I mean, it’s hard, isn’t it? I mean, because you know, when I, when I wrote on lament, have to define it, or people like, why would you write on that? But since writing on waiting, like when I tell someone I wrote a book on waiting, they’re like, oh yeah, they intuitively know we need some help with it. And so my definition is learning to live on what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. Let’s say it one more time. So, learning to live and what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. So, that’s my kind of way to put it in some sort of hopefully moderately memorable term. So, your definition in seasons of waiting, or how did you? I don’t think I

Betsy Childs Howard
even defined it, but I like your definition because it gets at the hard kind of waiting, because really, not all waiting is hard, right? Waiting for a baby to be born is exciting, waiting through an engagement to be married is not hard, I mean, it’s anticipatory waiting, but those are things that have a time, you know, when they’re going to end. So, the kind of waiting that you and I are talking about usually is waiting, you don’t know when it’s going to end, even if it’s going to end. So, that’s what I was writing about, and I think it’s the undefined nature, the undefined timescale that makes it so hard. And

Mark Vroegop
then, in seasons of waiting, how much of it was just related to your own personal, personal journey and what you were learning experientially? Or is it more.. here’s a theme from the Bible I’m really interested in. Tell me about the intermingling of personal and expositional.

Betsy Childs Howard
I got interested in waiting because I was single a lot longer than I wanted to be single. I really desired to be married, but also I did not know if that was what God wanted for me, but I didn’t feel like I could just completely move on from that, because it was still a desire. So I started really thinking about waiting that way, and then I started seeing waiting is all through the Bible, and it’s not just through the Bible in like isolated verses, it’s a theme of biblical theology. So I tried to take several different types of waiting that we, we have you, I’m sure each of you has one of these types of waiting in your life right now, and pull out the biblical thread of that and see what we could learn about waiting from that,

Mark Vroegop
so are you better at waiting today than you were in 20 was 2016 you were 2016

Betsy Childs Howard
I am more experienced, I am a lot more experienced. Okay,

Mark Vroegop
that’s not answering my question. No, I’m waiting for.. I mean,

Betsy Childs Howard
so, so, so, the, the amazing thing is, right about the time that I signed a book contract, God brought me a husband. So, hey, problem solved, never have to wait again.

Mark Vroegop
So, there’s your, there’s your key. Write a book, find a husband. So, there you go. The

Betsy Childs Howard
whole point of the book was God, God won’t waste your waiting, because He wants you to learn how to wait well in whatever season you’re waiting, so that you can then wait well for the rest of your life, so it’s not like, oh, you learn your lesson and move on, it’s you learn how to wait, so you can keep waiting, and that has definitely been true of my life, because I get married to a wonderful man, we, I was 34 when I got married, we wanted to have kids, we had four years of infertility, unexplained infertility, which was hard, but it was not as hard as it had been. If I hadn’t already done a lot of thinking about waiting, and then after we were church planters in Manhattan, and this sort of sense of waiting on a home, waiting for permanence from year to year, I didn’t know if we were going to be there the next year. We ended up moving, and now. We’re waiting. We’re in the season of ministry transition, and my husband is looking for a job, and it’s been like intense waiting, just, you know, like everybody we know knows we’re waiting, but it hasn’t gotten – I don’t know if I would say easier, but I feel more equipped, and I do trust that this is not going to be wasted,

Mark Vroegop
I think. In my experience, it’s almost like waiting has not as sharp teeth, if you will. There’s still a bite to it, but it doesn’t penetrate and hurt as bad. In my experience, I wrote waiting isn’t a waste, one, because I’m terrible at waiting, and I was like, well, one of the ways to get better at it is to write a book about it, and try and figure out what this is, but also through pastoral ministries, through, through some, some challenges, you know, through those great years of 2020 and 2021 and you know, all of those, I learned that I’m not really good at waiting, and when you’re kind of in a position where the only thing that you can do is wait, that’s really uncomfortable, and I found myself being more uncomfortable than than what I was comfortable with, and I thought, you know, if Isaiah 40 says that they who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they’ll mount up with wings like eagles, they’ll run and not grow weary and walk and not faint, I like, didn’t know what that means a little more, and so for me it was a sometimes you write a book because you’re good at it or an experience that you had a long track record with, in my case it was I really waste a lot of waiting and I’m kind of tired of myself with doing this and I think it was a better way to do it.

Betsy Childs Howard
Well, as you were writing your book and thinking a lot about waiting, would you say that waiting is a biblical subplot? Is it kind of off to the side, or how does it figure into the biblical story?

Mark Vroegop
I mean, what are we doing right now? We’re waiting for the return of Jesus, and so I think one of the things that I discovered, or maybe understood in a more profound way, is that the essence of what it means to be a follower of Jesus is to embrace a life of waiting in the totality of God’s plan. You know, we’re in the middle of this redemptive story, right, of creation, fall, redemption, restoration, and we’re in the gap between redemption and restoration, and we are not just waiting for the culmination of Jesus’s return, but we’re also waiting in sort of a micro sort of way for all sorts of other things that are also true, and you know, I love what James says about the farmer, he commends waiting, and he says, you know, brothers, look to the farmer who plants, and he waits for the latter rains, and the idea is that, you know, the farmer plants, and then he has to wait, and waiting is a part of what it means to be a farmer. In other words, if you don’t like waiting, don’t be a farmer, because it’s a part of the job description, and I think it’s true also for what it means to be a follower of Jesus, that there’s so many things in life where waiting is just a part of the dynamic, so I came to the conclusion it’s actually a part central part of the story, and you know, even think of the gospel story, even think of crucifixion, resurrection, there’s a gap, and you know, there’s disciples who are waiting, and they really don’t know what’s going to happen, and we kind of blow through the chapters, and like, oh, we know what happens, but God could have built into the plan of redemption, no waiting, it could have been, you know, death of Jesus, and you know, fairly quick resurrection, or maybe even immediate, but no, the waiting is actually built into it, and I think God builds waiting into our lives,

Betsy Childs Howard
well, and I was astonished when you look at the types of waiting, particularly that women are doing. Some of you are waiting for a prodigal to come home, some of you are dealing with infertility or chronic pain, and you’re waiting for healing, some of you are waiting for a husband. Those are all powerful biblical images, you know, and it’s so interesting that God uses real waiting in our lives to show a picture of His gospel, whether it’s you waiting for your prodigal child to come home. I love the story of Elizabeth, who was married to Zechariah, well past childbearing age. She was a picture of what the people of Israel were. Israel was a barren nation, because God had promised to send a Messiah, and He hadn’t sent it, and they’d been waiting for hundreds of years. And I love that when the angel told Zechariah that his old wife was going to have a son, he was also announcing not only had her barrenness ended, but the barrenness of Israel had ended, and you know we are not central to the biblical story in the same way that Elizabeth and John the Baptist were, but we can still live out that picture in our lives as we wait,

Mark Vroegop
so we look at the biblical characters and I. Um, we see a little bit of their struggle, although we have the advantage of kind of fast forwarding through their lives, right? So, you got Abraham, Joseph, Job, Paul – I mean, basically the story of every person in the Bible, by and large, is there’s waiting baked into their story. So, you think we’d see that, and we’d like, oh yeah, waiting is something we should embrace more often. Why do you think waiting is hard, and why do we not embrace it? Unless you think waiting is easy.

Betsy Childs Howard
I don’t think waiting is easy.

Mark Vroegop
Good, because I don’t. I think

Betsy Childs Howard
we don’t like to be out of control, and that makes it really hard. I think we don’t like to be hurt, so we would rather just end like we’d rather. I mean, honestly, that’s what’s desirable about Buddhism to people, is it promises if you just get rid of your desires, you won’t be able to experience pain. Waiting opens you up to experience pain, especially if you don’t know if you’re ever going to get the thing you’re waiting for. So I think those are just a couple of the reasons that it’s really hard. What do you think?

Mark Vroegop
Yeah, I think control is a big one. I think another one is, and I had to confront this, expectations like I have an idea of how my life is going to turn out, and I have an idea of how long something’s going to take. So, for instance, kind of real world stuff. When I’m going to go to the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, why are you laughing? Because you already have something baked into your calculus, which is I better bring a book, right? Because it’s going to be a long, a long wait. So we have an expectation of how long that’s going to take, and sometimes my expectations are off, and I think something’s going to take shorter than what it really does, and it gets really frustrating, and those expectations are part of my desire to have the world like I want it, and I remember one time I was in a counseling session with a therapist, and he was, he asked me, he said, “Mark, what, what, what are your expectations for pastoral ministry? And I said, “I don’t, I don’t have any. And he, who laughed over here? Who left right here? Someone laughed. That was not very nice. He laughed. Well, the funny thing is, is that’s exactly what he did, and it’s very unprofessional to laugh at your counselee, so and he was looking at me through the Zoom, and I was like, look, I’m not a counselor, but dude, I know you’re not supposed to do that, and that’s what I was feeling. And then my wife, who was seated next to me, she started laughing, and I was like, oh man, something’s up. And then he said, seriously, Mark, you don’t think you have any expectations? I don’t. And he said, Mark, everybody has expectations. Could you name them? And I was like, oh, so I started to name them, and sure enough, guess what? Surprise, I do have expectations. So one of the things I found helpful is just to start naming expectations of how long I think something’s going to take, and even down to I send this text, it should be sufficient, as opposed, or thinking, no, this is probably going to be a three text response, or a three meeting moment, or if you have teenagers or adult children, the trajectory is slower than what you would want, and it’s scarier, and you just need to think we got to release our expectations and play the long game, so I think part of it is just our, we have this idea of what our world is going to going to be like. Does that expectation thing make sense?

Betsy Childs Howard
Oh, definitely. And I think that’s why many people have their world rocked when they have to wait for something, because they have a schedule that they think this is going to happen at 25 this is going to happen at 30, this is going to happen by the time I’m 40, but you know, we, we put our expectations on this very, very brief period that we call life on earth, you know, and we don’t think that much about what’s beyond that, and I think if we did, it would help us with some of those expectations, because it’s like, you know, if if we go to McDonald’s and get a Happy Meal, and they’re out of choice for my children, that would just be a tragedy that they would bewail, but I don’t consider that a tragedy, you know. I think some of those expectations we have that don’t get fulfilled are probably more like that in the grand eternal scheme. Is

Mark Vroegop
there a biblical character who’s waiting, you particularly identify with? You mentioned a couple already, but is there one or two? You’re like, that’s

Betsy Childs Howard
yeah, I am not a Hannah. I think many of you are probably Hannah’s, where you like go to the Lord, and you know, feel desperate for this thing, and that sends you to the Lord. I feel like I’m probably more like Sarah waiting, and I see two.. you know, we were going to talk about what’s the wrong response to waiting. Well, I think Sarah shows us the two sinful responses to waiting. The first one is to just take control, you know, Sarah, God promised her a child. So she sends her maid servant to Abraham because she, she’s like, okay, I’m going to make this happen, and I see that tendency to want to just take control in ways that God has not given us, I see that in myself, but then also I see the tendency that Sarah has to kind of build up a thick skin, so that she’s not hurt, when, when God tells Abraham, you know, this time next year your wife will have a child, she laughs. You know, it’s easier to laugh because then nobody can make you feel ashamed. But waiting, when you wait, like I think the thing I most fear about waiting is that I will somehow be put to shame, and God, God recognizes that, that’s what Psalm 25 says, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. But I recognize in myself those two sinful tendencies, but yet Sarah still got what was promised, even though she was not very good at waiting for it. So that gives me a lot of hope.

Mark Vroegop
Do you think that there. well, let me ask it this way. When, when we’re in a position we have to wait, does it mean we’ve done something wrong?

Betsy Childs Howard
Absolutely not. I think you, you might think that until you start reading the Bible, and you see the Israelites, 40 years in the wilderness, now they have done something wrong, so maybe that was the wrong answer. But Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, and so many people had to wait, and God is working in us in our waiting, and I even, with this current season in my life, I, you know, sometimes I think, what is God gonna do at the end of it, and I can picture various things that would seem like make it worthwhile to me, but then I think maybe God is just making me who He wants me to be, and there’s not going to be something that everybody sees at the end of it, but, but back to your question, no, I don’t think that it means we’ve done something wrong, because God promises waiting,

Mark Vroegop
but it sure feels like it doesn’t sometimes, like it feels like I, you know, I’ve had conversations after writing, “Waiting isn’t a waste, and folks will say, “Well, look, you know, take the singleness thing or having a child, this is a good thing, it’s not that I want a bad thing, I’m not waiting for something bad, I’m waiting for something good, and then God isn’t providing it, so it feels like I’ve done something wrong because something good has not been granted to me. So,

Betsy Childs Howard
and very well-meaning people who make suggestions can also make you feel that way too, whether it’s, oh, you’re too picky or you need to do these extreme measures, but there are God does bless with prosperity, and He promises us prosperity. It’s just not as soon as we think. It’s in the life to come, and that’s when most of His promises are going to come true for us. So, if we don’t have the good things that He has given to many people, that doesn’t mean we’re never going to have them, and it doesn’t mean that marriage is not good or children are not good, but we’re not all meant to have them in this life, just like Jesus didn’t get to have those blessings in this life,

Mark Vroegop
yeah, and you know, isn’t it true also that I think, and we could pass the microphone around, we could hear hundreds of stories of, you know, I was waiting and waiting and waiting, and I got frustrated, and then fast forward, just just a matter of time until the providential hand of the Lord becomes clear, and then with some opportunities we get to look back and kind of trace the hand of God, and to see what He’s up to, and you’re just like, oh, wow, I am so grateful for where he’s placed us, or placed me, or even if it’s still really hard, we can see all of the good that the Lord intended, but in the moment, as we’re entering into those seasons, we just don’t have visibility, you know, on that, and I think, as a 55 year old, I’m better now, by God’s grace, at seeing my life through a lens of there’s goodness of the Lord here somewhere. I just can’t see it right now, and eventually it’s, it’s going to be clear,

Betsy Childs Howard
and you don’t have to say that your circumstances themselves are good, but you can believe that God is doing good through it. One illustration that’s really helpful to me is, I know probably a lot of you flew here, and it is so hard to be in a holding pattern when you’re flying somewhere, and you maybe even have reached your destination, but you can’t land because there’s not a place to land, and you’re just circling, and you feel like you’ve been taken hostage in the air, but if the pilot came on the inner commons that I’ve heard your frustration, the flight attendants have told me I’m just going to go ahead and land the plane, whether we’re cleared for landing or not, you would quickly change your mind and think that was not a good pilot. You did not want him to listen to your complaints, and I think we see that in hindsight too, that God’s goodness, if He gave us what we wanted when we want it, we wouldn’t get all of the goodness He wants us to have.

Mark Vroegop
Yeah, so this is parallel to what I talked about in my plenary session, but part of the reason that I prayed on that morning, please, Lord, not this, is because a year earlier I was at the Bethlehem conference for pastors, and I heard John Piper preach a message on the suffering of Adniram Judson, and he said in that sermon that God not only designs sufferings, but He specifically designed sufferings for ministers in order for the purpose of the display of the gospel, and I spent the next year going, what does that mean? So, when my wife tells me, you know, something’s not right with the pregnancy, I’m going back for the last year thinking, oh, this is it, this is it. Well, fast forward 21 years, because I’m in the 22nd year. 21 years, no, it was this year, 22 years. I’m flying to Minneapolis to speak at the exact same conference on the subject of suffering 22 years later, and I told my wife, after we landed, you know, there were so many seasons of waiting in that, so many seasons of difficulty, and I can just trace the hand of God. I can see it so clearly, and I’m so thankful, and I’m also so grateful that in 2004 I didn’t see the whole picture.

Betsy Childs Howard
Yes,

Mark Vroegop
I wouldn’t have been able to handle the whole picture, and I probably would have said no thanks, so I’m actually thankful I didn’t get a choice, because I can trace God’s hand and see His goodness, and waiting is a part of that,

Betsy Childs Howard
and I’m sure when you pray that prayer, a big part of that was not wanting it for Sarah, you know, you, you had heard at the pastor’s conference, God uses suffering for a minister’s good, and sometimes we can believe that for ourselves, but we can’t believe that for the people we love most, like our children. But we need to let God take His time in their lives as well. And sometimes it’s harder to wait with your children for things than it is for yourself, but don’t you want them to experience His goodness just like you do?

Mark Vroegop
Oh, totally, that’s a really great thought, especially if you have adult children. You got to get good at waiting, because their ability to control and manipulate their lives is gone. Well, you can do a little bit with money and vacations and things like that, but in general, your ability to do anything to change their circumstances, and you have to wait, and you don’t get the amount of information sometimes that you would want, or you have to let them be adults. It’s part of what God has designed, so you have to get really good at waiting, and not just waiting for your own, but waiting for someone else, and I think that’s uniquely hard, especially if a friend or a family member or adult children are waiting for something consequential, something important. It’s right, it’s waiting is hard for yourself, but waiting for someone else along with somebody else is really painful.

Betsy Childs Howard
So, we’ve said you don’t necessarily get all the things you want in this life, you’re not necessarily going to get the things that you’re waiting for, but Mark, what would you say we can hope for as a result of our waiting? What are the things that we can bank on?

Mark Vroegop
Well, first and foremost, it’s that God is going to provide everything we need in order to make it. We’re never going to run out of grace that we need, which then leads to my favorite line in your book. So tell them what that line is. Give your pen, get your pens out, get ready. This, I wish I had said this. This, you’re never gonna forget what Betsy’s about to say. Okay, here we go. You ready? Well,

Betsy Childs Howard
you can’t buy mana at Costco. They don’t sell it. You can’t buy it in bulk.

Mark Vroegop
Just say it again. You can’t buy mana in bulk. Bulk. Write that down.

Betsy Childs Howard
God gives you one day’s worth,

Mark Vroegop
one day’s worth. That’s right. Now, what does that mean? I assume that way would all know what that means. I think that is so.. it’s changed how I shop at Costco, by the way. Thank you very much. So,

Betsy Childs Howard
well, I was astounded. I’ve always known the story of manna in the wilderness, and it took the Israelites a few days to learn that they could not hoard the manna right, it would grow worms and stink, except for on the Sabbath they could gather enough for the Sabbath. Then they learned their lesson, but then they kept eating manna for 40 years, which to me is a picture that God is not looking for you to just learn a lesson in your waiting and then don’t have to do that anymore. He is looking just as he was making Israel depend on him for their daily bread. He wants us to be dependent on him for our daily grace. And if you look at your circumstance and think, I cannot do this for 20 years, that’s because you don’t have the grace to do it for 20 years. Yes, but I think you need to stop and ask yourself, do you have the grace to do this for one day, and tomorrow say, Can I do this for one more day, because that, that is the allotment that God gives us, and I think He does it because He wants us to keep coming to Him, you know, He doesn’t want us to store it up and not need him anymore. He wants us to be in relationship with him, and so he offers us grace one day at a time.

Mark Vroegop
You think of the Lord’s Prayer, right? What’s in there? Give us this day our

Betsy Childs Howard
daily,

Mark Vroegop
yeah, not weekly, not monthly, not lifetime, daily, daily, daily, daily. A friend of mine says that the challenge of the Christian life, is it so daily, right? It is, you got to get up, read your Bible, be godly 24 hours, go to bed, repeat, maybe 89 years in a row, or whatever, right? But you don’t get the ability to hoard grace, nor do you get the opportunity to take the troubles of tomorrow and bring them in, so if you want to, you know, worry about what’s going on tomorrow, you know, good luck with that, because you’re trying to borrow from tomorrow’s troubles, and you don’t have grace for that. So part of the strategy for learning to wait is like, well, I’m just going to trust God for what I have today, here’s what I know, and here’s how I’m gonna follow him, and that’s what my, how my definition of waiting kind of came to be. It was me just thinking through, I’m gonna.. there’s a lot I can’t do with waiting. There’s.. I feel powerless in terms of changing my circumstances, but there is a ton that I know to be true about God, and so therefore I can rehearse those things. So I have a list of, I don’t know, 50 or so verses of, like, God is statements, the Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my refuge, the Lord is my rock. You read the Psalms, and the psalmist doesn’t just say it like once, he says, like, four different times, you’re my rock, my refuge, my strong, strong tower, you are my hiding place. Why does he do that? Because he’s trying to be creative. Maybe I think the reason he does it is because he’s trying to hit his soul from multiple angles to convince himself I can trust the Lord, like, and so that that daily mana, that not buying it in bulk, I think it’s just really helpful, because if I could buy mana in bulk, you better believe I’d be like a prepper with manna, I’d be having in my basement, and like all that stuff, but we don’t, we don’t get that out, it

Betsy Childs Howard
would get worms and stains, I

Mark Vroegop
know it would, you’re right, it’d be a biohazard, so what are some of the sinful ways that we respond to waiting

Betsy Childs Howard
well in it, so I talked about trying to take control, and sometimes that’s in things that aren’t explicitly sinful, but it just might be sinful because this is something God has asked you to wait for. Other times it may be like, you know, I’ve had friends that have been in serious relationships or married non-Christians because they wanted to be married, God had not brought them a Christian husband, so they took control in that way, so there’s there’s that, but also I think one way that Satan can really try to get in and use our waiting for evil is to isolate us, or to isolate us from the people who have what we want in the body of Christ, I think that makes waiting so much harder. We think it’ll be easier if we’re not around the people who have what we want, but really, I think we’re supposed to be meeting each other’s needs, and that we should let our waiting push us towards each other.

Mark Vroegop
Yeah, so I identify in my book three, the three A’s that are the ditches, at least that are true for me, and I’ve had people give me more, but these are my three: anger, anxiety, and apathy. So, anger, anxiety, and apathy. So, anger, I’m gonna force change on this, because I’m mad, like you don’t care about the consequences. I’m just gonna take control of the situation by elevated emotions and sinful anger, anxiety, I’m going to think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it, think of, think, think, think, think, think, think, and just can try and try and research my way out of it, and gratefully, we don’t have very many tools to do research anymore in our hands, so, oh my goodness, my goodness, and yeah, right, yeah, anger, anxiety, apathy, and AI. There you go, so there you go. So that’s the fourth one. So, and then apathy, and I felt this, and I’m imagine some of you are there. You just waited so long, you’re just like, I just don’t care anymore. And you do, you’ve just, you’re so tired, I get it so sad that you just are kind of self-protecting, and so I think those are some of the ditches that we tend to fall into. And I found it helpful to ask people to list those three things in the order in which they appear in your life. So, are you – do you start apathetic and then get anxious and go to anger? Like, what’s like Def Con one, two, and three? Free for you, so I listed them in the order that is Rogapian, anger, anxiety, and apathy. It makes me mad. Then I overthink, and then I just like, go into

Betsy Childs Howard
your shell, or yeah,

Mark Vroegop
just like, who cares? And I do. It’s a silly thing that we do when we’re trying to kind of, you know, internally self-protect.

Betsy Childs Howard
So when you’re doing one of those things. How do you get out of that? What are some coping strategies to keep you from going to that place?

Mark Vroegop
Yeah, I think one is just knowing what our go-to is. So that’s actually been helpful for me to have those, because when I’m waiting and I’m feeling the tension of the waiting, I tend to go towards, you know, anger or anxiety first, and so it helps me just to know, oh, this is what I’m doing, because I find that sometimes in our waiting we just kind of lose our minds, we’re just, are so frustrated or so flustered that we just, we don’t even think about what we’re thinking about, and you know, one of the interesting things about the one of the Hebrew words for weight is the word kava, and it has at its root the idea of a cord that’s twisted, and so it’s the idea that there’s something that has tension built into it. Another interesting thing is the Hebrew word for weight is also connected to the word for hope. When I was in Israel, I was writing my book, and I showed our tour guide the word for wait, kava, and he said, “Oh yeah, hope, and I was like, “No, that’s wait, and he said, “It’s the same thing, and I was like, “Whoa, what do you mean it’s the same thing? So, just understanding that that tension and hope that’s risky is a part of what it means to wait, so when I feel tension, like, oh, I’m waiting, I should feel tension. It’s just it’s part of the normative experience of waiting. It’s God’s built tension into there, so that’s been helpful to not freak out when I feel so uncomfortable with waiting. What about you? What are strategies? Yeah,

Betsy Childs Howard
that’s very true, and I think that having kind of a perspective shift is also very helpful. Where, so to use an analogy, my boys are four and six, and we’re moving – we’ve moved out of the toddler stage, but there are some days where it feels really long when you’re home with young kids, there’s nobody to talk to, and that’s why someone has called parenting the longest, shortest time, because it feels really long sometimes. But then, when your kids grow up, it felt really short, and recognizing that there’s that dynamic at work in our waiting is really helpful to me, because although it feels really long, I know someday I will look back on it and realize this was the blink of an eye, and that helps me not go to that place of anxiety, realizing someday all of this waiting is going to be over, and also thinking of life as like a trip that we’re on, it’s not our destination. Our destination is the life to come with our Savior. This is like a multi-leg flight, which is being delayed, you know, and we’re waiting, and it’s not really.. it’s not the main event, it’s grueling, but you know what, like it helps us get through it if we remember what the destination is going to be, and then we don’t mind so much that we’re having to lug our bags through the airport, and then we’re having to wait and sit there for a delay, because it’s going to be worth it to get where we’re going.

Mark Vroegop
So, how many men do we have in the room? Raise your hand, there’s two there. Okay, very good. We’re having a little meeting afterwards, just so you know. So it’s a therapy session, okay? There you go. So reason I asked that, who’s worst at waiting, men or women?

Betsy Childs Howard
Well, if we’re gonna generalize, I would say women are probably better at waiting, but I don’t think that is a, that they’re naturally better. But you didn’t have

Mark Vroegop
the freedom to disagree in this. Yeah, the free, you can give your perspective. I

Betsy Childs Howard
think it’s kind of like changing diapers. Women are better at changing diapers because we just do it a lot, and I think there’s a lot of circumstances that women have to wait, that sometimes we just can’t get ourselves out of, and I know men have to wait a lot, but sometimes it seems like there’s ways that they can assert themselves and bypass things. But tell me, from your perspective, I, 100

Mark Vroegop
yeah, okay, yeah, I 100% agree with you that women are better at waiting. All right. Good night, all. See you all later. Thanks for coming. I do, and I think just, even you know, in so many, in so many ways, you know, even just think of pregnancy. Just, I think it’s hardwired into a woman to be able to think about waiting in a, in a different category. Right now, at the same time, I don’t think that that’s true, you know, just with every single man and every single woman, but I think that the Lord is uniquely wired women to have maybe a bias where waiting is something they can embrace and see the value of it, but

Betsy Childs Howard
the fact that you’re all here means it’s not easy, you know. You wouldn’t be here if it was just, if it was like riding a bike, once you learned it, you just did it. We have to learn over and over and over.

Mark Vroegop
So, let’s talk about how we help people who are waiting. So, we have people, maybe in our sphere of relationships, and you from personal experience, you know, as a single woman, and you’re wanting to be married, and you’re waiting. Just give us some input on in the community of relationships. What are some things that were helpful, and what are things that you could just tell us or help us? Like, don’t do this.

Betsy Childs Howard
Well, I, I joined a small church because I loved that it was more intergenerational, and I did better in singleness with a lot of married friends with children, you know, their lives were pretty different than mine, but I loved being able to be in their children’s lives, and it helped me feel like I could have some of that. I could be a spiritual mother in ways, I could be around families, and their lives were a little more stable than a lot of the single people who were getting married or moving around and stuff like that. So that was a blessing to me, and I was also able to help them in various ways, like if they wanted to go away for a weekend, I could keep their kids, and now I’m the recipient of some of that with people in my life who aren’t in the same life stage, and it’s such a blessing to me. I think that it can be tricky to walk with someone who is going through a different kind of waiting than you are, and I think that people sometimes want to talk about it, but they don’t know how, but I think it is good to talk about, not in a way to fix it, but in a way to just let sort of like a grieving person, let them talk, but I think being with people who are different than you is very helpful in waiting, rather than just clustering with people who have the same kind of hurts that you have. It sounds to me like the community that you were in, that you weren’t known as the person who’s the main thing about you is what’s missing in your life, I think that was true, and that was partly because I threw myself into things, and there were a lot of needs there. So, I loved being involved in the children’s ministry, or helping to lead a small group, along with another family hosting it, you know. So, but I don’t think I could have done those things. I was hungry for that community, so that got me outside of myself. It can turn you inside looking inward, but I don’t think that will be very helpful.

Mark Vroegop
So, if you were to speak to somebody who’s here, let’s just say they’re single, or maybe they long for children, Lord hasn’t blessed them, they’re trying to figure out what their employment situation is. Excuse those three. What counsel would you give in terms of the people that are around them? How could those folks minister to that person who’s wrestling with that kind of scenario?

Betsy Childs Howard
Well, certainly it’s helpful to pray for them. It’s helpful to remind them of God’s promises, the ones that we can just bank on, like Romans 828 It is not cliche, it’s wonderful that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him, who’ve called them according to His purpose. I think you can, without in a way, like I think once you let them talk about their hurt and their grief, you can also lovingly try to help them see all the things that God has blessed them with. Maybe it’s the financial provision that they’ve had, even though they need employment, you know, maybe it’s the nieces and nephews, and you have to know the person, you have to know whether they are seeking to be comforted or not. I think whether those things can be helpful, but they can be really helpful if somebody helps you get your eyes off yourself. But I think also they have to know that you have really listened and given weight to the loss or the waiting that they are doing.

Mark Vroegop
Yeah, that’s so good. Do you have a favorite Bible verse on waiting?

Betsy Childs Howard
I think Psalm 25 three, none who wait for those shall be put to shame. It’s just such a direct promise, and it’s.. it’s like I cling to that without knowing what it means, like I don’t know. How God is going to keep me from being put to shame in X situation, but I believe it, you know, I believe it by faith. And I also love this isn’t a Bible verse, but a Bible story. I love picturing the feeding of the 5000 where Jesus spread a table in the wilderness, and that helps me know that I may not know how God is going to meet my needs, but it doesn’t mean that He can’t do it. He can pull it out of nowhere.

Mark Vroegop
Yeah,

Betsy Childs Howard
what about you?

Mark Vroegop
Well, before I want you to double down again on the shame thing, because that’s a really fascinating verse, and that He doesn’t put us to shame in our waiting. What, what is the connection between shame and wit, you highlighted at the very beginning of our time, but I’m

Betsy Childs Howard
not sure I know the answer, but I think in my own life it’s when I’m thinking about what are other people thinking about my situation, they’re thinking you don’t have a husband because you were too picky, or you don’t have children because you won’t adopt, and you just need to adopt, and that’s what you’re doing, or your husband doesn’t have a job because you’ve put too many constraints on the kind of church he’s looking for, you know. And I hear those that narrative in my mind, and I want, if it doesn’t turn out well, they’re going to be proved right. And then I stop and think, are we doing what we think God is, God wants us to do right now. Are we trying to follow Him the way the Israelites followed the pillar of cloud and fire? And when I pray through that and say yes, I think then we’re not going to be put to shame, even if somebody thinks we made a bad choice before the Lord. We are not going to be put to shame, because we are trying to wait for his promises to be true in our lives.

Mark Vroegop
Yeah, that’s so good. I think that concept of will not be put to shame is a really important one to think about, because there is a shame component connected to waiting. It’s just kind of.. it’s.. it’s under the surface, so to speak. I didn’t explore that at all. I didn’t

Betsy Childs Howard
either. And the only.. the only reason it’s just because it’s in those Bible verses, it’s like a clue to something. It’s like, okay, what is the relationship between shame and waiting? And I haven’t fully tapped, tapped what it

Mark Vroegop
is. Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite verses is Psalm 40. I waited patiently for the Lord, you know, and just, just that phrase alone, but I actually like how Eugene Peterson renders it in the message, because there is no word for patient in the original text in Psalm 40. Now, there is a Hebrew word that could have been used, but what he does is he repeats the word for wait, so it doesn’t sound exactly like this, but it was like I cavahed and kavad for the Lord. So, Eugene Peterson renders it this way, and I just love this. I waited and waited and waited for the Lord, and that’s helpful to me, because what is what does it mean to patiently wait? And for me, what does it mean to patiently wait? It means to I wait longer than what I expected, instead of one word wait in the text, there’s three. I waited and waited and waited for the Lord. So that just gives me hope that when my expectations haven’t been met or aren’t going to be met, that I can trust that the Lord knows, knows what He’s doing in our waiting, and in so doing, I’ve found that I’m, I’m still not very good at waiting. I don’t know, I don’t know if I really want to be good at waiting. It’s a little scary. Like, what are you good at? I’m good at waiting. Ooh, that’s.. I don’t know, I mean, so.. but I don’t waste it as much, and I’m, I’m, I’m thankful for that. So that’s been a been a good journey, and it’s fun to see the seasons of waiting that God brings us through, and all that we’ve, all that we’ve learned, isn’t it? Do

Betsy Childs Howard
you have any interest in writing a book together on prosperity, so that God can just teach us more about that?

Mark Vroegop
Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, is this a trick question that’s being recorded, and the whole world’s gonna see it?

Betsy Childs Howard
I wrote a book on waiting, and then God really let me put it into practice.

Mark Vroegop
There we go. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, you’re wrapping this up in Ramon.

Betsy Childs Howard
Why don’t you close us over? All

Mark Vroegop
right. Thanks so much for coming, and hope that this has been helpful to all of you, and hope that you are better waiters than what we are. So we’re grateful that you’ve come today. So thank you. Let’s pray together. God, we thank you that you’re in our waiting, that there is nothing that is delayed that isn’t for our good, and that is one thing to pray, it’s another to live it when you would like to be married, when you’d like a child, when you don’t know what kind of job you’re going to have, or if you’ll have one, or when your phone will ring, or a text will come from a child who you’re just really worried about, or how you’re going to respond with the news from the medical office. There are so many real scenarios that require. An enormous outpouring of your grace, and we’re thankful that you have it available for us every day. There’s fresh mercy, fresh manna available to us. So, would you help my sisters and a few brothers to know in new ways how to be able to wait upon you, and we believe that you’re going to fulfill your word that it’s not a waste, it’s good, and that Lord, you’re going to help us to rise up with wings like eagles. We believe that that’s true, because you said it. We love you, Jesus, and thankful that you help us in our seasons that look like gaps. Let me pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Betsy Childs Howard
Amen.