By Yealee Brokaw

I am not a very patient person. I don’t like to wait.

After college, I had my life all planned out. I would get married by 24, be a news reporter in LA by 27, and drive a BMW by 30.  I laugh when I think about that now. Because what I imagined for my life then was so much smaller and one-dimensional than what it is today.

And the reality is, you just won’t get everything you want in life. But are you still going to go for it? To hope and wait and have faith that things will somehow work out because there is a God who is with you and for you? Everyone says life is short, but it’s actually long. It just goes by fast. And life moves in its own timeline and has a way of throwing curveballs.

I see now that waiting is a part of the process. If you skip that part, you miss out on all the good stuff. The hard stuff. Waiting reveals what you’re made of and whether you have any grit, perseverance or character.

Romans 8:24-25 says, “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

Hope is only possible in the invisible. Once you have what you want, hope vanishes. Hope is God’s way of providing strength and encouragement while you work, pray, fight and sacrifice for the things you want to materialize in your life. How kind is God that even in the space of waiting and not having, He provides something as essential to the human soul as hope?

What are you waiting for? What do you hope for?I have friends who long for a baby. They have done everything humanly possible to become parents for the past 10 years. I have seen them hopeful. I have seen them utterly devasted. I have seen them cry and be angry at God. But not once have they quit believing in God or His goodness.

I am in awe of them.

And so we wait. I’m praying and hoping with them to have a baby. I know God can do it because there are examples of this all over the Bible.

Some of my own biggest hopes did not materialize until much later. And in the waiting, I was gifted even bigger things I never knew my soul needed.

I never become a TV news reporter. But I became an attorney…at 39. All the closed doors in media were flung wide open when I said yes to law. I chased after one career not realizing that this other path would allow me to do the things that matter most to me now, and that is art and ministry.

I also got married. At 45! I always wanted a man who loved Jesus and lived for a purpose bigger than himself. It took a lifetime but I finally met Chad. We are both so aligned and single-minded in our purpose that I can’t imagine being married any earlier to anyone else.

It had to be now and God knew that.

Today, Chad and I live in Chicago to build a church called Mosaic Chicago. This has been such an unexpected gift! We have to seek and trust God constantly and take a lot of risks. But it is a rich and full life.

I hope that whatever it is that you are waiting for, you continue to move forward knowing that God’s got you and will work everything out for your good.

Waiting Well