Unmet expectations and Emmanuel

I remember the first time I got a call that someone was at stage 5 in the transplant evaluation for being my donor. 

This will be it, I thought, things are finally working out for me

I went through 4 almost donors, a confirmed living donor and a deceased donor before I walked out of that transplant experience. 

Every time things would fall apart, every ‘new rejection’, my heart would shatter. And I remember being unable to hold back the tears, trying to compose myself to go back into work, falling apart in my therapist’s office or banging the steering wheel on the way home because what the fuck, God?

I was on the waitlist for 16 months, and every month that would pass I would look in the mirror and say but God, you promised…

I’m sitting in this place of unmet expectations again. Where the thing that was supposed to finally work out failed. And it reminds me of the donors that weren’t.

Those months I spent waiting were some of the hardest months of my life. But I also wouldn’t trade them. Because it was in those moments of fingers gripping the steering wheel, screaming into the night, I won’t let go until you bless me, that I learned what faith was. 

I won’t let go until you bless me

If I had gotten my way, if the first donor had been approved, I don’t know if I would have learned faith in the same way. I think I needed all those months learning how to be in my body so when I needed to, I could be in my body. I needed to know how to sit with the pain so when the worst physical pain I’ve ever experienced came, I knew how to not hit the escape button. 

I took a picture of myself in the hospital, phone inches away from my face. I said I wanted to remember this moment, to remember what it was like to hold myself through it all. Because I did, and I could. I’ve got me. 

If I had gotten my way the first time, there would be a little boy out there who never got a transplant. But because of the ripple effect I created, his life was saved. 

I asked my husband last night what we do next, and he told me the next right thing. We do the next right thing. 

But what happens when you don’t know what the next right thing is?

Here’s what I know about waiting and unmet expectations: it's God's waiting room. The waiting, the longing, its fertile ground for God to show up. And part of that is not predicting how God will move but trusting God will. 

I don’t know the next right thing. I don’t know how God will show up. But the promise wasn’t a one and done, an easy road. The promise was we would never be alone. The promise was a red sea road when the waters threaten to drown you. The promise was when we listen, we will hear the voice of God. 

I didn’t know then how God would move, and I don’t know how God will move now. I’m not supposed to know. That’s the mystery of Emmanuel. My job is to listen, and to step in faith. And to trust that even when I don’t know the next right thing, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t. When all I see is loss, God sees a miracle. When all I feel is the weight of unmet expectations, God is saying just you wait. Do you know the plans I have for you? Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. To give you hope and a future.

Did you know that before that infamous verse, the call was for the people to set up homes in the wilderness? To live in exile among their enemies. They were called to wait, not understanding, not knowing their next move, and trust that God would show up. 

“When we run out, the promises of God run on and will carry us” Ann Voskamp