Once upon a time, I uttered a foolish prayer.

I prayed for patience.

It was very short and very quiet. But God heard it. 

I noticed after that my life became a series of waits – the kind of silent plod that turns the heart to wax and drains the soul of light.

I waited nine years for the green card that would grant me permanent residency in the US, a process that should take just two to four years. 

I waited 15 years for my father and 22 years for my mother to turn to Christ.

I waited 20 years for a husband. 

I waited for many other things that wound the fragile string of my patience so tightly I was convinced it would snap and never be put back together.

But it did not.

One of the common words for wait in Hebrew is qavah, which conveys the idea of waiting with anticipation or hope. But its literal meaning is to bind together, like strands to form a cord that is not easily broken.

The only reason I did not snap from the tension of waiting is because God bound me to Him through these truths in His Word:

1. God gives treasures of darkness (Isaiah 45:3)

I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. (Isaiah 45:3, ESV)

Before I landed my job in New York, I hopped through five jobs in the first six years of my working life. I specialised in running away from discomfort that came in the form of difficult work, difficult people, difficult situations.

I stayed in job number six for 20 years, not because I suddenly developed perseverance and long-suffering but because I was tied down by immigration requirements.

After seven fat years as a journalist in New York, the Lord called me to the events department, a scary team that bubbled with hot strife under the lid of cool camaraderie.

I crumbled in the first week of the job. On my first business trip, I landed in the emergency room of a hospital due to a sudden health crisis that plagued me for the next 12 months, even as I navigated my new role working with new people in new places around the world.

I could not run from the job, so I learnt to collapse on Jesus and to trust Him to bring fruit to the work of my feeble hands.

Shortly after, a corporate reshuffle shoved me under a manager who seethed with animosity towards me. Every day was a battle. I never filed a formal complaint to HR for hostile work environment but I dropped daily complaints to God with many indignant and self-pitying tears.

I begged God to make a way for my green card to come through quickly so I could escape the mental and emotional tyranny of my manager.

God did not. 

I learnt during those dark days to submit to my manager, to love her though I could not like her, to pray for her, to make her look good by doing well at work, and to wait impatiently on God to rescue me. 

I cried a lot, I died a lot and I grew a lot during what I call “the reign of terror”.

Two years later, the manager was laid off. 

I continued to battle soul-crushing corporate shenanigans while desperately seeking escape routes.

None opened.

So I stayed and took more lessons from God on how to make peace, love people and produce events.

The green card finally came through after nine years in immigration purgatory.

Three weeks after I got my green card, God called me back to Singapore, a move that would render the green card useless. 

But it was not useless. I came back to Singapore laden with treasures collected in the darkness of waiting. I understood then that my heavenly Father – out of His wisdom and His love for me – had withheld the green card to keep me where I was so I didn’t miss out on these gifts.

2. God does not withhold what’s good 

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favour and honour; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. (Psalm 84:11, NIV)

After I gave over my love life to God, I spent years wrestling with Him over my singlehood.

I was drowning under a rising tide of perplexity (You said you would!), disappointment (Why wouldn’t you?), bitterness (They’re so young! Why not me first?), insecurity (Am I not good enough?) and fear (Am I going to be alone forever with scented candles for company?)

When God dropped this Scripture into my heart, it settled to a complete rest. If He withholds then it means it was not a good thing for me.

I had to trust that He knew what was best and would give it to me.

Twenty years later, He did. 

3. The vision will surely come 

And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. (Habakkuk, 2:3, ESV)

God gave me many promises about my family, especially about my parents, for transformed and eternal lives.

But separated by an ocean, two continents, 18 hours of flight time and a very expensive air ticket, I saw them just once a year. During those visits, evidence contrary to God’s promises was overwhelming. I wrestled often with doubt over the vision of God.

I wrote down everything God showed me. I went back often to read them so my spirit could run with it when my heart faltered. 

Years later, my nieces and then my sister-in-law gave their lives to Christ. I shared with them the vision so they could run with it too.

It was another 10 years before another member of the family turned to Christ. Then my father finally gave his life to Jesus after 15 years of desperate prayers. My mom followed suit seven years later.

Had I not written down the vision and waited for it, I would have perished in my despair.

4. The wall does come down (Joshua 6:20)

When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. (Joshua 6:20, NIV)

When I first started to contend for my family’s salvation, the Lord unveiled His battle plan in this passage.

The Israelites marched obediently around the impenetrable wall of Jericho with no visible signs of progress, culminating in a day that was seven times tougher than the first six.

But the wall stood firm and proud: Not a brick moved, not a speck of debris drifted to encourage the battered hearts of a weary people.

But when the wall came down at the appointed time, it did so in one fell swoop.

God does not need to make deposits to secure His promise. He is good on His Word.

I walked around the proverbial wall of Jericho for years, just praying and praising, with no signs of change. But when each family member came to Christ, it was swift.

I am still walking around that wall for the rest of them.

5. It is good to talk to yourself  

Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord! (Psalm 27:14, NKJV)

I love King David. Not just because the man is drop dead gorgeous inside and outside but because he was an expert at preaching to himself when his heart failed (1 Samuel 30:6).

We need spiritual leaders over us and community around us, but there are times one has to get into a corner with God and duke it out with Him until His Word becomes flesh in us. 

“I say” in this verse is an emphasis, a reminder to David of his previous exhortation to himself. Charles Spurgeon called it David’s “own private seal to the word”. 

During the season of waiting, I learnt to talk to myself, to set my own private seal to the word of God.

6. Delight in Jesus 

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4, NIV)

Waiting was and still is the hardest thing to do in my journey of faith.

There is rejoicing in the exuberance of the heights and intimacy in the cocoon of the valley. Waiting is a stifling passage through the corridors of monotony and silence until I learnt to delight in Jesus.

I learnt to celebrate the small wins, give thanks for friendships, dance like nobody is watching, sing arias only God can applaud. I learnt to love my Sunday school kids even when they sleep and talk through class, to pat myself on the back when I was able to eke out a smile from my poker-faced mother. I learnt to rejoice in every mark of growth in my spiritual children and to run to Jesus for the times they make me weep.

I grabbed everything as good and perfect gifts from God. I learnt to delight in God’s presence in all things. 

7. He makes everything beautiful 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV)

I know now there is no end to waiting this side of heaven.

The end of one wait is the beginning of another because the God of eternity does not stop working. What He has begun He brings to completion.

I am no longer bound by immigration to stay in a job but I am still waiting on God daily to direct me in my work.

My parents and some family members have turned to Christ but I’m still waiting for the rest. 

God has brought me to my husband but we are waiting for His plan to unfold in our lives. 

This promise is an anchor of hope for my wandering soul.

Standing now on the threshold of “done” and “not yet”, I finally understand that waiting is not a dusty pit stop to be endured on the way to the destination, but a place of beauty to linger in, to grow in and to thrive in.

I realised God was not just forging patience but forming His very own Son Jesus Christ in me in the waiting.

I see now that the mangled heap on the Cross that man despised was, in fact, my greatest prize.

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