Still Waiting: Hope for When God Doesn't Give You What You Want
272
Still Waiting: Hope for When God Doesn't Give You What You Want
272Paperback
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496410764 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tyndale House Publishers |
| Publication date: | 04/04/2017 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Still Waiting
Hope For When God Doesn't Give You What You Want
By Ann Swindell
Tyndale House Publishers
Copyright © 2017 Ann SwindellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4964-1076-4
CHAPTER 1
When Waiting Makes You Broken
Her name, I imagine, was Sarah. A good name — the name of the wife of Abraham, the father of her people. Her parents had named her twenty-odd years ago, when she was a tight ball of legs and arms still grabbing at air, grasping at nothing. She had been small and sickly when she was born, and they were not sure if she would make it. So they named her Sarah, hoping that a strong name would make her strong too.
Whether it was the name or the favor of the God her family worshiped, Sarah made it through that uncertain first year to become a healthy, happy little girl. Like other girls in her village, she stayed home with her mother and learned the work of cleaning and cooking and telling stories. Her father made respectable money from his metalworking, and he would arrange for her to marry a godly man when it was time. Her dowry was fair enough to secure an upright husband, and her father's good name was enough to bring suitors when she was only twelve.
She bled for the first time when she was fourteen. At first, it was cause for quiet celebration in the family — she had reached menses; she had attained womanhood. That week her mother explained to her what she could now expect from her body and what that meant for her in terms of ceremonial purity within the larger community. Each month there would be a time when she would have to stay away from communal worship and the homes of other people. But this was not a punishment; it was simply the way with women.
Then her mother smiled and told Sarah about the future that lay ahead of her. Within the year, she might become betrothed, and within another year or two, she would be wed. Could she imagine, her mother whispered, the joy of having her own children in a few years? Perhaps she might have two children — or three, if God blessed her — before she turned twenty.
Sarah marveled that such a small trickle of blood could change everything. She felt excited about her new status — and happy at her mother's happiness, happy at her father's smile of approval. Life transformed in front of her. Now she was a woman. She would be leaving home soon.
But after two weeks, the bleeding had not stopped. Her mother, who had once been so happy over this news, now started to worry herself around the house. Sarah could tell by the way she kneaded the bread every morning — too much, too hard, too long. Their dinner loaves became misshapen and tired looking. When Sarah asked her mother when the bleeding would stop, her mother told her that it should have stopped already. "Only a week at a time," she said. "Seven days at once, not more."
Sarah did not understand what was going on — in her own body or in her mother's mind.
After three weeks, Sarah overheard her mother talking to her father in low tones after they thought the children had fallen asleep. Sarah shared a mat with her younger sister; her older brothers had already left the house, and her younger brother was only five, heavy with sleep. Sarah heard the fear in her mother's voice, and she strained to understand the words.
The whispers were too low to comprehend, but she knew something was wrong — wrong with her.
* * *
The account of the Bleeding Woman is a small story in the Bible, repeated in three of the four Gospels. But it is remarkable in its power and its ability to startle me back to God.
It is the backstory that I daydream about — the life of this woman before her encounter with Christ. To me, that seems to be at least half of the story. The writers of the Gospels note, calmly and evenly, that she had been bleeding for twelve years. But I can't read those lines without wondering about the substance of those days. There was nothing calm or even about those years, I imagine, because not only had she been bleeding for twelve years; she had been waiting for twelve years. And waiting is not a calm and even business.
Most of this woman's story in Scripture focuses on her moment with Jesus — that moment of healing, the inversion of her existence. But she had lived through those twelve years, and she suffered through them in ways that are unknown to us. I find myself drawn to those years — drawn to the marrow of them, drawn to the inside of them, drawn to the hurt that must have lingered in every moment of those 4,380 days. Because who but a bleeding woman can know the pain of life leaving your body every moment of the day? Who but a bleeding woman can know the struggle of waiting for a healing that has proven impossible to find?
I am drawn to those years of hers — those days — because I have had years of waiting of my own. Years of brokenness and longing that stretched past twelve.
My own journey unfolds less dramatically than hers — less obviously, perhaps. But it is still full of shame and hiding, still full of the waiting that threatened to undo me.
Where My Story Begins
Like the Bleeding Woman, I grew up immersed in the things of God. Before I was old enough to talk, let alone know any words, I was baptized into Christianity. Held high in a white gown by a pastor in a gray robe, I was sprinkled with water and invited into the life of the church. Not only did that moment signify my parents' vow to raise me in the faith, but it was the first moment of many in my journey toward Christ. Because, as simple as this sounds, I can never remember a day when I haven't loved God. I have always wanted to know him. I still do.
Everything was spiritual to me; I grew up as a deeply attentive child who wanted to see connections running through every flower, every song, every person. I believed that God's presence could be found anywhere, if only I could open my eyes wide enough to see him. I sang songs to God that I made up in my head. I hummed to him as I discovered bark patterns on curving trees in the backyard, and I danced for him as I bent low to smell the strawberry-sweetness that poured from the lilies of the valley splayed across our lawn.
I prayed with childlike fervor, falling asleep with both dreams and fears while trying to understand the concept of eternity. One night, when I was seven or eight years old, I cried for my mother in the dark, terrified that life would go on and on forever. She held me but couldn't give the answer I wanted, because she couldn't explain the unexplainable — that dizzying notion of infinity.
Still, even with my fears and the many things I couldn't comprehend, I continued to pray every night that I can remember. I made recitations to God of my hopes and my thanks, my desires and my wishes. I whispered into the dark of my bedroom, praying in a hush that I trusted he could hear. I believed he was listening.
But also like the Bleeding Woman, my story with suffering — trivial as it might initially seem — starts when I was young. I was eleven. It was an unassuming beginning, something small and originally unmagnified in my life. I was in the school play in fifth grade — The Pirates of Penzance. In case you've never heard of the comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, it's a tongue-twisting musical that includes pirates, a group of sisters (of whom I was one), and a hero and heroine who fall in love. A classic romance story — with a pirate twist! I loved the music, loved the eyelet dress I got to wear, loved the heat of the lights on my face, loved the rush of color and sound and storytelling swirling around me.
I had been wearing glasses since third grade, but in fifth grade I asked my parents for contacts. They agreed, and I got fitted for gas permeable contact lenses — a long name for hard contacts. Every morning I tucked the tiny plastic disks over my pupils, feeling them swim and settle onto the centers of my eyes. Every evening I diligently popped them out, cleaned them, and snapped them into my contact case. Click, click.
What happened during those months in fifth grade before The Pirates of Penzance is that I developed a fascination with my eyes — particularly, with my eyelashes and eyebrows. When showtime came, I applied theater makeup, which included mascara. I had never worn makeup before, and adding mascara to my lashes created another layer of captivation with my eyes. I started touching my eyelashes and running the tips of my fingers along them. My eyelashes were long and very full; I had inherited them from my father. They were lovely.
It happened during one performance as I stood in the tiled hallway: I waited for my cue to enter (stage left), and I pulled out my first eyelash. I remember the moment, remember the feeling. It felt good, like the release of a sneeze. It felt like the pop that comes from unscrewing a pressurized jar. It felt like the start of something I didn't understand.
That day I plucked out my first eyelash and, although I didn't know it at the time, started a habit that snowballed into years and years of pulling out my own eyelashes and eyebrows.
It is odd, I know. It is strange.
What started as a passing moment avalanched a deep struggle into my young life. After that, I pulled out eyelashes every day. Every single day.
It felt like a release of tension; it felt like I couldn't stop.
At first, I don't remember my parents noticing that I was pulling out my eyelashes, and later, my eyebrows. I didn't think too much about it either. But soon the bare patches of skin framing my eyes became visibly obvious.
I didn't know what was happening, and my parents seemed to be as mystified as I was. They would tell me to stop playing with my eyelashes, to stop touching them. I would tell myself the same thing. But even though I didn't like what I was doing — even though I hated how it made me look — I found that I couldn't stop. When I felt a little stressed or uncomfortable or slightly anxious — a tendency passed down through my genes — my hands would start floating up to my lash line, ready to pluck out a lash or two. Or three or four.
But I didn't always pull out my lashes just because I leaned toward perfectionism as a child, just because I was prone to low-grade anxiety. Sometimes I tugged on my lash line when I wasn't thinking, wasn't worried, wasn't stressed. I've always been a reader, and I would spend hours on our family room couch, diving into rich worlds on the page, devouring whole books and series over the course of a few days.
The problem? I found that every time I read, the pages of my books were covered with eyelashes. Tiny brown Cs, peppered like unwanted snowflakes across the pages. I cried when I saw them; I didn't know how to stop doing what I didn't want to do. My parents cried with me; they didn't know how to stop me either.
And so they started doing some research. My father, a physician, discovered that what I was struggling with was a real condition, odd as it seemed.
The diagnosis: a medical condition called trichotillomania. It turned out I wasn't the only one with an itching desire to pull out my eyelashes and my eyebrows; it actually had a name. Some people pull hair from their heads or from their arms; I pulled out my eyelashes and brows. Trichotillomania, as we came to find out, is fairly common — it's estimated that up to 4 percent of people across the globe and one percent of Americans (or about 2.5 million people in the United States) live with the condition. But it remains mostly unknown to the general public, and chances are, you've never even heard of it. That's because it is rarely discussed. Why?
Shame. That's why.
How do you explain to someone that you can't stop pulling out your own hair? How do you say that what you feel is like a gravitational pull — although no one is forcing you to do the thing that you hate? How could I explain that in my brain, the urge to pull on — and out — my eyelashes was a low-level earthquake constantly rumbling below the surface?
I couldn't. It was too strange, too weird.
Imagine it for yourself: you aren't pulling out your hair in a dramatic display of biblical despair, as Ezra did when he learned that the people of God were disobeying Yahweh (see Ezra 9:3). You aren't shaving it off as a mourning ritual, as Job did (see Job 1:20). Your hair isn't falling out due to old age or chemotherapy — both socially acceptable reasons for losing hair. You alone are responsible for pulling out your hair, for ruining your own appearance. And as much as you want to stop, you find it to be impossible.
Unlike self-harm, trichotillomania is a medical diagnosis that isn't necessarily based in self-hate — although many sufferers report feelings of low self-esteem due to their condition. The American Journal of Psychiatry defines the condition this way:
Trichotillomania is a poorly understood disorder characterized by repetitive hair pulling that leads to noticeable hair loss, distress, and social or functional impairment. The peak age at onset is 12-13 years, and the disorder is often chronic and difficult to treat. ... In DSM-IV, it is categorized as an impulse control disorder. ... Although rising tension and subsequent pleasure, gratification, or relief are integral to the current diagnostic criteria for trichotillomania, many people with debilitating hair pulling do not endorse these criteria.
So this urge I had to pull out my lashes as a little girl? This inability to stop? It was textbook behavior. But as my father continued to research, he also discovered that according to most sources, trichotillomania is incurable. Medical books told him it was unexplainable. Some of his fellow doctors said it was permanent.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to treat. There is no cure.
Some people with trich start pulling due to trauma, either familial or physical: the divorce of parents, the death of a pet, even a move to a new town. I dealt with none of these things. I had a stable home life, loving parents, and a fun little sister. I struggled for a while with my weight, but other than that, my biggest trauma had been that Peter didn't want to date me in fourth grade. Yes, I was a little on the worrisome and anxious side — I always wanted to do things right, and well. But my onset of trich had no clear medical reason, and now apparently my diagnosis had no clear solution.
I wonder if this is, in some small way, how the Bleeding Woman felt. There was no clear reason for the onset of her bleeding — at least, not that we know about. There was no clear solution for how to treat it or how to fix it. There was no direction at all. Just a physical, shameful, confusing problem that led to days of waiting and then years of waiting — waiting for a cure that never materialized. It would take a miracle for her to be healed.
It would take a miracle for me to be healed too.
The Brokenness We Bear
All of us live with brokenness in our lives. To varying degrees and in various ways, brokenness is more normal than foreign in the human experience. And although I know there were many other ways I was already broken as an eleven-year-old, trichotillomania was the clearest way I started to understand brokenness in myself. Up until that point, I had been a "good girl": I did what I was supposed to do, I finished my homework assignments, I sang loudly in the church choir, I ate my veggies. And I genuinely liked being a good girl — I've always been a rule follower by nature, another soul in a long line of rule followers on both sides of my family. Like my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents before me, I felt secure when I did the right thing. This way of living offered me a sense of internal control.
But with trichotillomania, suddenly I couldn't do what I believed was the right thing. That insatiable compulsion to pull out my eyelashes and eyebrows — and the fact that I kept pulling them out, even when I wanted to stop — made me feel broken. That was the first time I experienced the emotion of knowing my own brokenness. It was also the first time I felt helpless to change my brokenness. Even though I wished and hoped and prayed it would disappear, trich wouldn't leave me alone.
It felt like a blot on my young life, like a red X on what had previously been a perfect test. Up until the age of eleven, if I'd had real brokenness, I'd been able to effectively ignore it or mask it. That Koosh ball I stole from my cousin as a five-year-old? I apologized and never did it again. That mean thing I said to my little sister? I stopped saying it. But when it came to trich, I couldn't stop. I couldn't ever stop. My parents couldn't fix it, and I couldn't fix it. Stuck isn't a strong enough word to explain how I felt. Trapped comes closer. Ultimately, when it came down to it, the only thing I could do was wait — and hope that I might grow out of trichotillomania.
In ways both small and overwhelming, we all know what brokenness feels like. And sometimes our own brokenness — or the brokenness of those we love — seems like too much to bear. Whether it's buying more than we can afford or striking out in anger at the people we love or eating more than we want to or pushing people away when we need them most, we all have places where brokenness is painfully apparent in our own hearts. We all have parts of our lives where we are waiting for things to change.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Still Waiting by Ann Swindell, Stephanie Rische. Copyright © 2017 Ann Swindell. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword xi
Author's Note xiii
Introduction: A Woman Acquainted with Waiting xv
Chapter 1 When Waiting Makes You Broken 1
Chapter 2 When Waiting Makes You Weak 19
Chapter 3 When Waiting Costs You Everything 45
Chapter 4 When Waiting Claims Your Identity 67
Chapter 5 When Waiting Feels Offensive 91
Chapter 6 When Waiting Brings You Shame 115
Chapter 7 When Waiting Feels Like Suffering 139
Chapter 8 When Waiting Is Risky 163
Chapter 9 Waiting with Grace 183
Chapter 10 Hope for the Waiting Ones 201
Epilogue The Unexpected Sweetness of Waiting 219
Acknowledgments 227
Notes 231
Discussion Questions 235
About the Author 243
What People are Saying About This
Ann Swindell tells her story of waiting with winsome honesty. Readers who have fought secret battles will recognize her exhausting effort to avoid shame. Anyone who has prayed the same prayer for years will resonate with her struggle to be content in all circumstances while at the same time holding on to the hope of healing. Still Waiting helps the reader not only experience Swindell’s story but lift our gaze from her life and our own to the healing love of Christ.
We all have to deal with some degree of waiting in our lives. Through a beautiful retelling of the story of the Bleeding Woman—as well as honest glimpses into her own story—Ann points us back to Jesus in every stage of the waiting process. Still Waiting reminds readers that the waiting period can provide fertile soil for our roots to run deep, knowing that our hope lies not in our circumstances but rather in the Lord.
The remarkable biblical story of the Bleeding Woman whom Jesus healed is the backdrop for this treasure of a book. Weaving in the intimate details of her own ongoing journey to healing with honesty and insight, Ann Swindell creatively, compassionately, and gently takes us by the hand and leads us to Jesus with astonishing wisdom that can only come from personal experience. Her skillfully written words spoke deeply into my often impatient, questioning heart in seasons of waiting, pointing to life-changing truth and providing encouragement and hope. We come to see each element of the waiting as a gift with an eternal purpose, drawing us closer to the one who sovereignly knows our need.
Life constantly (and painfully) reminds us how hard waiting truly is. In fact, waiting may well be one of the most challenging spiritual tasks that’s set before us. Ann Swindell gently invites us to learn from someone intimately familiar with waiting: the hemorrhaging woman described in Mark 5. As Ann explores, the short glimpse Scripture gives us of this woman’s life and faith is rich fodder for aiding us in our own weakness and waiting, encouraging us to keep reaching out to Jesus in expectant hope.
So few of us know how to wait well. Ann has lived a long wait and found God in it. We need the vulnerability—laced with the wisdom God has imparted during her years of waiting—that Ann Swindell offers on these pages. As only a skilled storyteller can do, she invites us to find our own stories within hers and within the narrative of Scripture that is written for us, the waiting ones.
Ann Swindell tells her story of waiting with winsome honesty. Readers who have fought secret battles will recognize her exhausting effort to avoid shame. Anyone who has prayed the same prayer for years will resonate with her struggle to be content in all circumstances while at the same time holding on to the hope of healing. Still Waiting helps the reader not only experience Swindell’s story but lift our gaze from her life and our own to the healing love of Christ.
Ann has taken us through a tender, personal journey that we can all relate to. We understand the ache of shame, and we have our own stories of waiting for relief. With biblical truth and the gentle wisdom of a good friend, Ann tells both the Bleeding Woman’s story and her own, and leads us to our present hope and fullness in Christ as we wait.
In Still Waiting, Ann gives us insight into what to do while we are waiting. Not only what to do, but how to stay attached to the bigger God-story in the midst of our struggles. Ann has not only given us insight and truth but has lived it out in her own life. May this book stir you to love Jesus more and believe that he is able to meet with you, even in the waiting.
Grab a cup of coffee and meet your new best friend. That’s how you’ll feel after reading this expertly crafted book, which is about far more than waiting. It is about how to live—how to take what life is offering at any moment and be whole and at peace. Swindell intimately weaves together painful and touching stories from her own life with Scripture and reflections, and creates a very real space of hope.
In Still Waiting, both Ann’s faith and her struggles are creatively woven together with a biblical story in a way that gives each of us hope for our respective challenges. This is a great reminder of God’s faithfulness in spite of our circumstances.
Still Waiting offers wisdom and hope in an area I have long struggled to overcome: the ability to wait well. Ann lovingly guides us through Scripture and comes alongside us with her own story as we go on a journey to learn what it means to wait in a way that isn’t lazy but provides an open space in our hearts and schedules for God to meet us in the midst of the unknown. And that is always, always, worth the wait.