In Hopes Deferred

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." 

Proverbs 13:12

I have not fully understood the weight of "a hope deferred" until this season of our life. 

Will and I left the mission field in Nigeria only to feel called back into missions less than a year later. After raising support and making plans, we made it to the field in South Sudan last October, eager to get started on the work God so clearly called us to. 

I have longed to be a mother for many years now. It has always been a longing of my heart and ever since Will and I got married (almost 7 years ago), I was so excited that my day to be a mom would soon come. 

We had to evacuate South Sudan suddenly, after only being there for five months. Once we left the field, we did not have a large enough team to return. We are in a waiting season. Waiting for the green light that it is safe enough to return and that we have a big enough team to be sustainable on such a remote field. Our hope of life in South Sudan and ministry in our rural community is deferred. So, we wait. 

After many years of seeking the Lord for timing to start a family, we felt the freedom to begin trying. After a very short time of trying we got pregnant. Two weeks after finding out we were pregnant, I had a miscarriage. Hope deferred. The longing for a family is prolonged. So, we wait...in the pain.

deferred: to put off to a later time. To postpone. 

So here we sit. In hopes deferred. In longings being postponed. They are not longings that are sinful or extravagant. We are longing for good things, but for things that are not coming to fruition yet. The hardest part of a hope deferred is not knowing if or when your longing will be fulfilled. So, we hold on to hope. We wait in the hope of knowing that if our longing is fulfilled, it will be a "tree of life". Some days, that hope is easier than others. Sometimes that seems obvious and it is easy to hold on to hope. Other days, it doesn't seem worth the heartache that lurks in the waiting. It's too hard. There's too much pain and too many unknowns. But God calls us to Him in this waiting. These heartaches are not from Him. Death is not from God, war is not from God. They are evidences of sin in this world. He is weeping with us in this. He did not do this to us. So we go to Him and we wait. We wait for hopes to be fulfilled and dreams to come to pass. We trust that He is sufficient in the waiting, even when the waiting is painful.