Deep inside both the exciting and the excruciating, there is a very special kind of waiting that happens in the unseen pauses. It’s right there where I’ve been waiting for you to join me so we can walk together to see this world and all these pauses in a brand new way.
I’m so glad you’re here with me.
It’s the tiny, hardly-thought-of pauses tucked within big and small moments that carry all the weight and ultimately create the arc of our lives. They are so microscopic we miss them all the time, but within the boundaries of these brushed-over pauses are lessons lying in wait... and it’s there where His fingerprints can be found.
We can see it when:
We take our kids to school.
We plant a seed in a pot.
We send a text to a friend.
We pick up a book.
We have a conversation.
We open a door.
All of these moments contain hidden treasures, just waiting to be discovered.
Along with these tiny pauses, I’ve also come to realize that just because it’s a pause, doesn’t mean it’s constrained by time or happening in nano-seconds. Pauses come in all shapes and sizes and for different purposes.
It can be the kind of pause that is experienced after you put seeds of faithfulness in the ground but before you see the fullness of the fruit you were hoping for.
Or it could be that type of pause when your thumb draws close to the ‘send’ button on the text and you hope the words you’ve written conveyed love.
It’s lived in the breath you take before you answer your friend when she asked THAT question over coffee, and the brave decision you made to say the loving hard thing.
It’s found in the hand you put to the handle of that door of that doctor’s office or hospital or clinic where all the unknown waits on the other side.
Or, it could even be those three days He spent in the grave.
Every pause matters and in each, God’s presence is right there.
We rarely consider their weight but there are things we can learn in those estimated 350,000 daily decisions we make and the pauses between them. And, if we could play them back in slow motion, we would realize those tiny moments actually carry the presence of God as much as the major ones do. Maybe even more.
Picture this type of pause: You take your firstborn to kindergarten (UGH) and your heart feels like it’s going to burst right through your skin as you do your best to keep it together and take the obligatory picture. You lead them right to the door, give them a big hug and hold back tears watching them walk in until you reach the parking lot where all you can think of is their college application deadline.
Did you see it?
It’s so easy to miss. It wasn’t the smile in the picture to mark the day. I would say, the most important moment in that illustration is in the millisecond pause between holding his pudgy hand tightly in yours and when your brain finally tells your hand to stop squeezing tight and let it go as he walks through the door.
Right there. Pause.
Right there it happens in those millimeters played in slow motion that become inches that become feet as distance is created between your outstretched hands. If time could stand still in that millisecond, we could see that there were thousands of tiny decisions and moments that led to that one. There are lessons to be learned in that pause. This is where God wants us and waits for us... His presence is in those pauses and He wants us to be present with Him in them.
It’s amazing to consider that the God of time and space who lives outside of the constraints of both has orchestrated thousands of planned moments all throughout our day to give us the gift of the awareness of His presence if we will only stop, take it all in and let Him speak.
What’s coming right here at Waiting on Wonders is a blog full of pauses; simple reflections from the miraculous to the mundane where you and I will stop to notice God’s presence in it all. Hopefully, along the way, we will learn to be present to life’s little pauses and to the still small voice that wants to meet us there. As we go, you will hear from me here once a week where I'll post a little pause and what God's been teaching me. I'll also be talking about it on instagram at @waitingonwonders if you'd like to follow along. I'd love to hear from you and how this pause resonates and what God is teaching you.
They all matter. Every strategic, epic, ordinary, long, microscopic, fabulous, normal pause. Let’s walk arm in arm and commit not rush any of them but through each of them, see God’s hand as He leads us through.
-TB
"Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him...." - Psalm 37:7