Another negative pregnancy test. I sobbed on the floor of my bedroom, struggling with the waves of sorrow crashing over me. After almost a year and a half of trying to get pregnant and still the disappointment was like a knife in my heart. This time though was worse.

As I wept I felt my heart break and shatter. The tears falling from my eyes seemed to be draining away every last vestige of hope I had within me. I felt hollow and broken. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep trying.” After all our efforts, it just wasn’t enough, nothing was working. “Is this what you want God? This hopeless empty feeling? Is this what waiting is?

Am I supposed to just keep waiting like this, trapped in helpless limbo, hoping and praying for you to notice my pain and despair and have pity on me? What do I do God, when you ask me to wait on you, and to keep waiting, and keep waiting? How do I keep going?” Hesitantly I got up off the floor and opened the Bible. I turned to my reading for the day. Romans 8. Verse 23 says, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

As I read, comfort crept into my soul and slowly I felt hope returning and this time it wasn’t based on fertility options, on figuring out the exact right thing to do. This was more, so much more. The words wait eagerly leapt off the page at me. Oh how I longed to be like that, with a living passion in the here and now, no matter what waiting was before me!

How do I live life eagerly while I live in this waiting? I needed to know, I needed to taste it in my very soul. So I dove into the word and I searched for days. And the verses came and washed across my soul with a living hope.

Galatians 5:5. ”For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.”

Is it that easy? That the Spirit through faith in Christ works eagerly waiting inside me? But what about the times when I don’t feel any eagerness?

1 John 3:2. “Beloved we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” One day, I will be like Him and one day I will see Him. That in and of itself causes eagerness and hope to spring forth in my heart.

When my focus is on Him and the hope of life with Him, all the waiting of this life dims in comparison. I believe He really can teach my heart to eagerly wait on Him instead of this empty waiting I automatically tend to do on my own. I can identify with the father who begged Jesus for mercy on his demon-possessed son in Mark 9; “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” Waiting in helpless situations seems to be a theme in my life, but I am learning that I don’t have to wait with emptiness or lack of hope. My circumstances might not change but my heart has. I can keep going because life with its sorrow and trials will not last forever and He will help me keep my eyes focused on the hope that never fails me and on the life that lasts.

Psalm 42:1-2. “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God, When shall I come and appear before God?”

Psalm 130:5-6.  “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”

Lord, let that be my desire, let that be my hope. You turn my waiting into eagerly waiting. You Lord are worth the wait.