I Will Wait

Querying agents and a sunburn of the soul.

It’s been so hard to write lately. Because it’s been so hard to live in my head. The vulnerability of querying agents has resulted in the universal feeling of waiting for approval—seeking approval—in every area of my life. And so I’m just pushing myself.

Excellence, excellence, excellence will protect you.

(Hello, god I have fashioned and held tightly from a young age. How buried and insidious you were. Now you are exposed, and it seems, more demanding and terrifying than ever.)

Excellence will protect you from the sting of rejection. Excellence is the only option.

And then when any feedback comes that is negative, or I feel like others are passively banking on my efforts while I strive all the harder, unsupported—it feels like a mortal wound.

I am furious, hair-on-fire, fighting-mad.

I am hurt, despairing, alone.

And God has given me a way of some reprieve: to begin my day in scripture. But time and time I wake up and go to my inbox. Or I wake up and search for that thing I must not forget to put in my shopping cart.

(One guardrail I attempted to place ahead of this querying process was setting up screen time limits on specific apps, allowing only 30 minutes for email per day. BUT! I never close the app, so when I wake—from the very first!—and open my email, it’s already used up the limit. My first action of the day is to click “Ignore the limit.” Bless my soul! Oh, my friends. You see how I’m floundering.)

I wake up wanting a message.
I wake up thinking of something I need.
And I go
to the wrong
place.

After a while, I did make my way into the study on Psalms I’ve committed to. David’s words delight me, soothe me, gently rebuke me.

“You have said, ‘Seek my face,’
Lord, your face I do seek.” (Ps. 27)

So, I stopped resisting and confessed: Lord, I am suffering because I am not being obedient. I am not seeking you first. I am not turning to you for comfort, but trying to control, prepare, self-protect.

And then, with my Bible already open to the next assigned verse, I opened my eyes and was overwhelmed by what I read.

“Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you.” (Is. 30:18)

The Lord waits! To be gracious to you! How could this be true? Oh, but it is true. This his is character. He waits. He’s there, waiting, to be gracious to us. To cover us with his grace.

Lately, my soul… my heart and spirit… has felt as though I’m perpetually sunburnt on the inside. The slightest abrasion sends me to the rafters.

“He exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice,
blessed are those who wait for him.”

There it is. My balm. I am not desperate for the acceptance of others. God, in his mercy, has claimed me as his own. I am not hanging on the edge, waiting on agents to respond. I am waiting on the Lord. In his time, he will connect me with the right person.

And while I wait, he can still bless me! Because it is not him I must wait for. He is near and bidding me come closer, deeper into his grace, mercy, and kindness.

I have known this truth in the core of my being and I have felt a deep confidence in it, like the quiet of the deep ocean even as the surface froths and tosses. But I am realizing that, like David in his Psalms, I must claim and reclaim and put on again the truth of God’s promises. This trial is a chance to open my eyes to submerged vessels of untruth hiding in the murk of my soul.

I pursue excellence in a feeble attempt to be untouchable, to avoid pain.

He exalts himself to show mercy to me.

I run in circles, trying to control small things in order to escape the feeling of being unable to control big things.

He waits for me to return to the truth of his grace. And this morning, I have.

Now, my toddler is kicking the wall through the slats in his crib, and the kitchen is full of yesterday’s dishes, and there’s homeschool and piling in the car for this commitment, and that errand, and such-and-so appointment. But like a child scampering alongside a great procession of people ascending, my soul will run free and play, confident it is being led in the right direction.