waiting & grace.

A year ago today, I wrote the following journal entry. While waiting. While hoping. While anxious. Truth covered my soul then & now, reading it again. I hope it does the same for you. ❤️

My schedule is packed this week. My eyes are opening around 7 and struggling to keep up. My heart is, all-at-once, excited & utterly petrified over what is to come, in this season of transition, waiting, hiddenness that I don’t fully understand, because I feel so fully exposed—to what I could do, to what door God could open, to the type of work I could do in the waiting.

So I’m finding a few moments to retreat, right here in the middle of Knoxville, in Starbucks, in between appointments. When I should be checking emails & nailing down plans, I’m slowing down. Instead of making sure I’ve got all the things together, I’m getting away. I’m hiding myself.

Yesterday, I read Romans 4 as I waited. Waited at the doctor’s office. Waited in the car. Waited for an interview. Abraham & Sarah were not unfamiliar with waiting, and neither am I. But what I am unfamiliar with, I’m finding, is the caliber of faith they showed even as they were waiting—literally—for life to come out of death.

I’m waiting for much, much smaller things. 

And yet my faith feels so small, so weak when compared to theirs. 

I feel weak, vulnerable, exposed to the ugly parts of myself no one else sees. No one else knows.

I struggle to hit sent or call to let them know, even.

I struggle to let anyone else in.

But really, in these fiery moments of waiting, no one else needs to know. My life is hidden with Christ on high. I am being re-made in this secret place, just as I have been made before. 

And I can trust him here, because my faith is not on a sliding scale. My righteousness is not on the line here because I can’t pull myself together, or out of my own head. But, but, but—as I commit to belief again today, I’m renewed in the truth that I am righteous. As I have faith, so I am changed to have more faith. And not so that new, big, successful things can happen, no. So that my roots can grow down, down deeper in him.

So these tears in my eyes, then? The ones unveiling my anxious heart? They are watering the soil of faith I’m sitting in. They are not what my faith or hope is based in. 

My hope is Jesus. And the grace that has abounded in him.

Because it’s here, in this low day, this overcast morning, that I’m learning: the only abundance I need is grace.

Let that sink in deep: the only abundance I need is grace. 

Not things. Not people. Not a job. Not a book deal. Not faster growth. Not more fruit.

The only abundance I need is grace. 

And it’s here. There’s so much grace here in this space of slowing down, of waiting, of living, of hoping.

This grace-fueled hope, roots deep in his love, is unshakeable. 

You are unshakeable. 

And as much as I struggle to believe that’s who I am—I know it’s who he is. I know it’s what this hope is. Unshakeable. I’ll just bunker down there when I can’t believe that it’s true about me, too.

I’ll just stay hidden today. And as much as I can before the seasons change again. That doesn’t mean I need to withdraw from everything, nor do I need to dive into all the things headfirst. It means I need to make time for him. It means I let him keep leading, ordering, establishing my steps. It means I listen for his grace-filled voice. “My sheep know my voice, and they follow me. They do not know the voice of a stranger.”

And I know it’s him right now, whispering these words of hiddenness over me.

I know it will be him tomorrow, confirming where he wants me next. 

I know it’s him in the grief. in the joy. in the ups and downs.

It’s him beneath the rubble of insecurity I call my town. It’s him trying to shift stones & rebuild. I know it’s him.

I know he’s here, with me, now.

I know it’s him.

I know it’s not him in the confusion, the chaos, the overwhelmed parts of me. He’s not orchestrating that. He’s here to usher in peace that comes in this abundant grace.

And I must let him.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Let us. 

That takes a yielding. A yielding of my rights, plans, dreams, thoughts, ways, educated guesses. 

A yielding of my self-protective measures.

A yielding of what I expect.

A yielding of myself. A lowering into the ground.

Where roots can grow. Where grace can water. Where fruit can wait. 

Where death can—literally—give way to life.