Waiting for the Right Time

It is hard to want something badly only to never see it come to fruitition. At least for the time being. Infertility taught me a lot about that.

Back when we were trying for that first baby and month after month coming up short, I remember reading something from Sister Patricia Proctor where she said that God does all things in His time. Not ours. Being human, patience is a learned virtue and one that most of us do not do well with. And it seems God's greatest way to teach us patience is to withhold (in our minds) something we want. NOW.

My husband told me not long ago that he had always thought that when he was 30 and unmarried with no children that it was the way his life would continue on. He had set a limit of 30 on himself to accomplish these things. We met when he was 36 and Shelby wasn't born until he was 43. He said this experience taught him that timing was everything. And it was God who was holding the stop-watch, not him.

How often in life do "wait for the right time" only to avoid doing something? If God gives you an opening, you should do it. I'm not saying it's an easy or natural thing, but it is what it is. One of my favorite movies, Steel Magnolias, shows this when Shelby tells her mother she is pregnant. She starts by saying that she wants to tell her parents when they are together but they are never together. Perhaps that is what is best as her father is elated with the news of a grandchild but her mother is put off. Would telling them at the same time have caused them to have an argument or worse? Would it have tempered her father's joy or made her mother resentful?

There is no perfect time in our world. There is only God's time which is always perfect.