Waiting Places

Waiting Places

Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.

My assistant popped into my office to tell me about Ceena, the lawyer the law firm had interviewed and hired while I was on vacation. A recent law school graduate, Ceena was passionate about human rights and would be joining in our medical malpractice legal group.

I felt my eyebrow twitch in surprise at the information—what was a human rights attorney doing practicing in central Minnesota instead of the East Coast, and why would the firm hire her to defend medical malpractice cases? It made zero sense.

Neither Ceena nor I remained at that law firm. She is now in Washington, DC, working for International Justice Mission, and I am writing books and teaching college courses, my law license on inactive status. We are both on mission for God, together in friendship but separate in the paths he has set our feet upon.

Our time spent as coworkers totaled just over eighteen months before we went down wildly different roads, and yet those eighteen months were a lesson in why waiting for God’s timing is always better than jumping ahead of him and trying to do it ourselves. We both credit that relatively short period of time as a God-ordained, God-designed intersection of our individual lives. We developed a deep and abiding spiritual sisterhood before our orbits flung us apart, possibly forever.

Prior to Ceena’s hire, I had been struggling. Unhappy in my legal career, I found myself waiting on God, asking him to make my next steps clear, praying that I would not act ahead of his timing in an attempt to resolve my discontent. Had I jumped ahead of God’s plan, in my anxiousness to get out of the hard waiting place, I would have missed meeting Ceena and the precious gift of friendship God was preparing.

Wait patiently for God’s plan to unfold; do not rush through hard places ahead of him. Be brave. Be courageous. God has something far better than what we would have dreamed for ourselves—and it just might be a new friend.

— Julie

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

As you wait patiently on God, watch for who he might be sending to intersect your path.