Waiting

Waiting.  Note to readers: brutal honesty ahead, beware.
Silas is 10 months.  For 10 months now I have endured every form of sleeplessness.  

Not getting to sleep, waking needlessly, not being able to get back to sleep once awakened.  I have been brave in some moments, mostly I have been impatient and frustrated.  I rely on medications to sleep, of which I am desperate to be released from.  I am waiting.  

Waiting for 'the rescue that is sure to come' but will that rescue be in the way that I hope?  Will rescue from the LORD mean deliverance from sleeplessness?  Will it be deliverance from fear?  Will it be strength to endure?  I am still waiting.  


Most often, I am afraid when I should not be, and worried when I know it bears no fruit.  How can I have the big family I always dreamed of if, with each child, I must endure the hell of sleeplessness of my own body's doing?  Again I ask the same questions 'how long, O Lord,' and 'why?'  


I take some comfort in others' sufferings.  Of course, not that they suffer, but that I am not alone.  And that in fact, I am very very blessed even with the limited sufferings I must face.  I've been reading a lot of war-time novels and I am overwhelmed.  Yes, with the loss of lives.  Yes, with the brutality.  But more often overwhelmed by the everyday, practical aspects of what people endured.  Did they sleep while bombs were overhead?  I'm reading about the siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian war- 4 years?  4 YEARS people were trapped in this city, surrounded by ware and snipers, family members being shot daily.  Stuck in the city.  They must have asked 'how long' and 'why' too.  How did they endure?  HOW?  


So yes, my sleeplessness is a pathetic excuse for doubt or fear or worry.  I have so much.  This one verse I read is sticking to me, and 'sticking-it-to-me' in that I realize how poorly I am executing it:
Psalm 27:13 -14 "Yet I am confident that I WILL see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living.  Wait patiently for the LORD, be brave and courageous.  yes, wait patiently for the LORD."


hmm.  DO I have continued hope in the goodness of the Lord?  Am I waiting patiently for HIM and only Him (not just healing?)  Am I being patient in how I endure this trial?  Am I brave or courageous?  The dictionary says of patience: bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship,pain, etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint,anger, or the like.


SO many others are waiting too.  I'm not alone in this.  Waiting- will their child survive this illness, will they ever get married, will they have the children they want to have, will they ever find their purpose, will they...  


Waiting is so hard.  But maybe, in the words of Brooke Fraser's song 


"When I can't feel You [God], I have learned to reach out just the same
When I can't hear You [God], I know You still hear every word I pray
And i want You more than i want to live another day
And as I wait for you maybe I'm made more faithful"