Never Forsaken: He's With Us While We Wait

 

The LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and they gave them whatever they wanted, and so they plundered Egypt.  Exodus 12:36

 The Israelites had a very long season of waiting before they saw the fulfillment of the promise of God to bring them out of Egypt. I wonder if they knew what God had said to Abraham back in Genesis 15:13? Evidently someone had been keeping track of how long they had been there at least because they knew, in Exodus 12:41, that they had been in Egypt for exactly 430 years to the day. I wonder what this waiting was like. If you were part of the group that was in the 200-300 year range, you might know that God’s deliverance wouldn’t happen in your lifetime because it would be at least 400 years. But that group that was approaching the 400-year mark, they probably got antsy. Perhaps this was why Moses had the impression as a younger man that he was supposed to be the deliverer of his people. But, even for them, it was a long wait – made even longer by the terrible conditions they lived in with an oppressive ruler that forced them into hard labor and killed their children.

 What seasons of waiting have you endured, or are you experiencing? I think of being pregnant first. Like the Israelites, though on a microscopic level, I knew *about* how long I would have to wait for my child to be born. At least I knew that it certainly wouldn’t be longer than 43 weeks as my doctor wouldn’t let it go past that. With my first son, it was nearly that, with him being born well into the second week past his due date. Even though I knew about how long I would have to wait, it seemed like forever. I could barely imagine what life would be like once I had passed that milestone. Then came my daughter. After my last son was born, my first said, “Mom, you keep having babies and they keep coming out boys. When am I gonna get a sister?” After three c-sections in 4 years, wisdom said that we should not continue adding to our family in this way, and I had had it on my heart since I was a young girl that I wanted to adopt internationally. We prayed and talked and researched. My husband even went on an exploratory trip to India to see if that was where we were supposed to adopt from, but God made it super clear to us that we should adopt from Liberia, West Africa, a country we hadn’t even known existed a year before that. His timing is so perfect! Here’s the challenge with adoption, there is no hard and fast end date. They didn’t tell me, 43 weeks or even 43 months was guaranteed. We were adopting from the same orphanage/organization that friends of ours were and they had their adoption stretch out for one more month, one more month, one more month. In fact, the dad of that family was my mission team leader when I visited Liberia, and he had intended to bring their daughter home with us, but had to give her the awful news that it would, indeed, be one more month. Seeing what they had gone through, I didn’t even tell my daughter that I was working on adopting her when I met her in person for the first time. I loved on her in every way I knew how, but I didn’t make promises that I couldn’t know the timeline of. I, too, had to return from that trip without my daughter, and now I knew what her living conditions were like. She was severely malnourished, even the little bit of protein she received each day was often stolen from her. I couldn’t count on any of the clothes or toys I had brought for her remaining with her once I left. And worse, I knew that she was being beaten and abused. I had to leave my precious daughter in that situation, and I couldn’t do anything about it. No wonder that when I came home my doctor thought I was experiencing a deep depression, and I probably was, but I was also experiencing acute Lyme Disease and it was missed because of the extraordinary circumstances (and a lack of medical education in our area about it). And, like the Israelites, when the time came, it was fast and urgent. Situations had come up in our process that made it so we needed to get there and bring our daughter home, like yesterday! My husband hopped on the first flight out and, to our great joy, brought our daughter home to us. It turned out that the organization our adoption agency had partnered with in Liberia had been practicing child trafficking, sending kids home with the highest bidder or the first person to get there, but putting out adoption contracts with multiple people. They were shut down shortly after my daughter came home, but while my husband was in country, he met another man who had come to bring some children home and had just popped out to the bush to pick out a baby. In case you’ve never been through the adoption process, that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Here’s the Thing: My seasons of waiting are infinitesimal compared to the Israelites’ many experiences, but they have shaped me. Throughout all of them, God has been faithful. He has never left me alone in the waiting, and He has always kept His promises to me. Waiting is hard! But, with God, it is not unbearable and not without hope.