When you’re waiting for the phone to ring with news, whether it’s test results, the outcome of an interview, an update on a relative’s health or something as mundane as what you should buy for dinner, you’re living in a kind of limbo. I’m currently in that limbo as I wait to hear the result of an interview and I feel like I’ve been living in that limbo for over a month now. The limbo of “something is about to happen that could change my life even minutely and it may have already been decided but no one has told me yet”. It’s a funny, unsettling kind of feeling in that there are two (or more!) parallel universes (or timelines) depending on the outcome of that phone call. Your life could go down any of them but you don’t know which and you have no idea what the future holds in any of them. So what do you do? I know what I do… I think of what I should do if this happens, but then worry that I haven’t thought about what to do if that happens, until I eventually throw everything up in the air and decide “we’ll cross that bridge if/when we come to it”. This is generally my husband’s influence, but I am a forward thinker and planner. It makes me anxious not knowing what is going to happen.

Earlier this week I was on retreat. I’d never done it before and it was a really special time of deepening my relationship with God. I went largely with the intention of discerning where God was leading me, hoping to come away with a clear picture of a job role (there’s me even forward planning what the creator of the universe is going to say… Oops). Of course, God did nothing of the sort because he was working on his agenda and not mine. What he did speak to me about was trust.

Trust is something that I think I’m good at but actually I’m really not. Whether it’s trusting God, trusting people in relationships or even trusting myself, things get in the way. This may be largely down to past experiences but could also be down to my pride of thinking I’m the one who can do this better and I’m worried about what you’d do if I left it up to you. I’m sure (and hope!) I’m not alone in this…

In my journey with God recently this has looked like saying I trust him, that he is a faithful God (which he is) and that he has a plan (which he does), but then second guessing him when things start to happen. “What if they offer me this job, I don’t really want it, but am I meant to take it?!” “What if I say yes to this job and it’s completely the wrong thing and I regret it every day?!” “What if they don’t offer me this job?? I’m never going to find another job I want to do again!” See, it’s stressful being me.

This is not trusting God!! Trusting God is letting go, taking a breath and waiting for it to unfold. Trusting God is waiting for him to speak to you, giving him the time to and zoning yourself out. Trusting God is hard, counterintuitive and countercultural. Our culture is all about trusting yourself, listening to yourself and “following your own bliss”. I’m choosing to trust in a being I can’t see and sometimes doubt the existence of. Even as Christians, we’ve got to admit that’s a bit crazy.

But something God has reminded me this week (and yes, what I did need reminding) is that he is real, and if he is real, then he has a plan, yes, but more than that, if he is real then what have I to fear? “The Lord [my] God is with [me], the mighty warrior who saves.” (Zeph 3:17). Even the darkness is not dark to him (Psalm 139:12). I’m not going to lie, sometimes I will forget this, sometimes I will fail to see him, sometimes I will think I know best.

But if God is real and he is who he says he is, then he is not only worthy of all praise and honour and glory, but he is worthy of my trust. So I’m sitting here in this limbo, waiting for the phone to ring, knowing that God has given me a good feeling about this one but also not holding too tightly. So if I get it, he is good and he is faithful and he has a plan. If I don’t, he is good and he is faithful and he has a plan.

“The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14). So, I will
be still and know that he is God (Psalm 46:10) and he is with me. He is good and his plans are to prosper me, not to harm me; to give me a hope and a future (Jer 29:11). If I would only trust in him and not myself, he will make my paths straight (Proverbs 3:5-6) Whether I get a job now or it’s back to the drawing board, I will rest in this knowledge and trust that this season will, like so many before it, become testimony to God’s unfailing love.