When Waiting Feels Hard
One of the hardest parts of experiencing medical adversity is the waiting that comes with it. In our daughter’s journey with EoE, we spent countless hours waiting to see if she would keep the meal down, waiting to get in with a specialist, waiting in waiting rooms, waiting during procedures, waiting to get results, waiting for a diagnosis, waiting to see if treatment would work, waiting for lab results, waiting for...you get the idea. Lots of waiting. :) Those moments of waiting were often the times when I felt most desperate.
Looking back now, I can see that the waiting was painful because I really had no control over when it would be over or what would happen when it was. Having my hands taken off of the wheel, so to speak, was terrifying.
And as the unknown loomed ahead of me, space for worry began to open in my mind. Some days that worry was stronger than others, but it was a battle that continued for most of our journey.
Lack of forward progress can make waiting frustrating, too. I can remember calling specialists offices first thing each morning to see if there had been any cancellations that day. I did everything I could to make sure that Audra was able to be seen at the earliest possible slot. When your daughter is as sick as ours was, waiting a month to be seen seemed unbearable. As her mom, I needed to see tangible steps towards finding the root of why she was so sick.
Waiting is hard, but what if I told you there was a remedy? A secret tool to overcome it. I actually stumbled upon this by accident. Early on in our days of preparing to launch helloHOPE, Andrew and I gathered a list of every Bible verse that contained the word “hope.” We made our way through the list (which I would totally recommend, by the way), circling and starring verses that especially stood out to us. As I was going back through the list for a second time, I was using a new Bible that happened to be a different translation. One of the first verses I read confused me because I didn’t see the word “hope” anywhere. Thinking I must have mis-read the reference, I double checked, but I had found the correct verse. What had happened to “hope”?
As it turns out, my current Bible translation often uses the word “wait” for “hope.” Waiting and hoping are two words that I would not have paired together, but Romans 8:25 says it perfectly: “But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.” That was the key! At it’s core, hoping means waiting. We can turn that waiting from agony and anxiety to eagerness and expectancy when we hope in the truth of what God says. Saturating your mind and your heart with truth brings hope in the waiting.
“I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and courageous. Wait for the Lord.”
Psalm 27:13-14