Sitting in the crowd watching, as he climbed the mountain to reach for the long awaited promises. 

We wait and we worry, we grumble, and we pray that he hurry.

Waiting has never been our greatest strength, nor is the patience that could have kept us from the desert heat.

Forty long days and nights we wait and the wrestling gets to us, and the people complain, and they can no longer refrain, from bending their knee to the distant nothingness. 

Off their wrists and from around their necks come the thing they think they need, when all they had to do was wait a little longer for the perfection that would have been guarenteed. 

Why is this story, this tale of old, so familiar to me? 

Why is it that we have our own lives written on the pages of history. 

And yet it's in the waiting we lose all our patience, and turn to bow our knee, to anything but what will truly set us free.

I am not one for patience, and yet it should be my very identity. 

I'm not one for waiting even though the one whom I love waited so patiently for me. 

Maybe pain and patience don't walk so well together.

Maybe one will always take the lead. 

It's maybe in the surrender to both, the answers will be. 

Surrender to patience and stand through the pain. 

And maybe as he comes down the mountain with face aglow, he will find me without having taken a knee. 

(This is a spin off the story in Exodus when the people of Israel couldn't wait until Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and some personal touches) 

She lived in a world that was bitterly cold,

where the wind would really bite at her face.

She knew it was hard and the terrain only for the bold,

But she knew she was set on this race.

She would bundle up tight in the comfort of words,

and the occasional warmth of a touch.

But as winter got colder and the nights got longer,

the little she had wasn't much.

The lonely wind would get faster and what she had for a shelter,

would buckle under the strain of it all.

Until she knelt to her knees and pick up the bundle,

of leather-bound books down the hall.

She tossed them all in the fire and snuggled up close,

to a comfort of surrender and grace.

She realized in that moment that this heat was enough,

even in such a cold and dark place. 

Today I realized that I am invisible. 

What a realization this is to me, when all my life has been on a make shift stage of glory. 

Today I realized that I am invisible. 

What must I do to be seen, when I walk around and my fingertips disappear so effortlessly.

Today I realized that I am invisible. 

This daily longing to be recognized for who I am and not what others see, weighs me down to the point of buckling knees. 

Today I realized that I am invisible. 

Years I have spent willing to bend, willing to reveal, willing to compromise, all in the hopes of being seen and wanted. 

But today I realized I am still invisible. 

And as I walk around effortlessly, there is one who reaches out and the cloak drops to my feet. 

For today I am no longer invisible.

Because He has removed the deception from me.

Our journey is often marked by seasons of grief.

 I noticed very subtly in those seasons that they are remarkably seasoned with grace. 

In my deepest aching and my deepest longing, and in the midst of unbearable heartache,

there is a hand that reaches out so gently to me. 

I've not always taken the hand stretched out so mercifully,

but often times I have. 

It's in the times of my own stubbornness or independence that I don't take hold of the hand of rescue, 

and yet He takes a head first dive into the darkness with me. 

It's He, who reaches to the depths to rescue. 

I've not an answer for your questions, I've not a prescription for the pain. 

I'm also in a season where searching and waiting is all I've seen. 

And maybe the answer we are looking for is at the bottom of all the sorrow. 

That in the surrender we will one day find freedom. 

That in the daring act of no longer swimming we will find some strength that's ours to borrow. 

Dare I ask you to wait with me. 

To take up the mantle of patience and the art of letting go. 

And maybe at the end of this long, hard road, we will find the table has been set and longing swallowed.