Never, is a word I use often. It is a pillow I use to suffocate hope-before hope is disappointed. It is true what C. Brontë wrote in Jane Eyre that, “To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.” How strange that such a bleak endeavor should be so compelling. The issue of hope is of particular relevance when one is in a place of waiting. After all, what need is there of hope if not for the waiting?
During such times, I frequently deceive myself into thinking that I await..with patience. Waiting so long that I come to believe that, "...no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.” In truth, my resting place was far from pleasant. Instead, the soft place on which my head and heart lay, is doubt. My wait for longing fulfilled is not graceful. I am dissatisfied with whatever circumstance in which I find myself-if it is not the circumstance in which I desire to be. Then I long to "rise and move on". Not so that I may (having successfully completed my waiting) move on to the next stage or goal--but so that I can avoid waiting for the same old longings that go unfulfilled year after year. Feeling as if “I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.” At times, rising and moving on are the only things that make me feel as if my life is moving forward.
The heart of the matter is not doubt that I will ever have that for which I deeply desire---but that God is holding out on me. Doubt is not doubt at all, but the belief in the lie that there is more God is not giving me.
So at times, I spend my days in the tension between the lack of courage to hope and the energy required to doubt. How ironic that learning to rest should be so exhausting.
