Ep 103: Still Waiting? Give It Twenty Years, Momma.

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Transcript

By nature, I’m a curious person, and I am also reflective. I am curious with myself, and I love to be curious with you. So I do have a question for you as we come into today’s episode. What is that dream that you have stopped talking about? You’ve even stopped looking at it or thinking about it. Maybe it’s a book that’s been living in your head for literally years, or a podcast that you want to start.

Maybe it’s a ministry or a business, a calling that is out there somewhere, something God put in you so clearly that you couldn’t deny it at the time. But years kept passing, life kept not cooperating, and somewhere along the way, you just became more quiet about it because it hurt less not to talk about it than to keep explaining why it hasn’t happened or defending yourself.

Maybe the dream, the desire is closer than that. Maybe it’s a longing or a dream for a marriage that is more than just two ships that pass in the night, uh, a marriage that is developed around the idea of intimacy instead of partnership. Maybe there’s a dream or longing for a friendship, you know, that down deep kind of friendship where someone knows the real you and shows up anyway.

Or here’s one of the quietest dreams of all, the one that gets stuck in your throat on the way out that you barely have words to whisper. It’s a longing to finally feel at home in your own story with your own personhood. It’s wrapped around identity and confidence and the you that you’re created to be.

No more performing, no more proving just who you are Does any of this strike a chord? Have you been in that place? Maybe you’re there now. Maybe you’re in that gap right now in one area of life or another, and it doesn’t feel like you’re just waiting any longer.

Feels like you’ve missed something, like everyone else has their breakthrough, everyone else got the memo, and you are still here in the waiting room of forever, wondering, “Should I just abandon ship?” Maybe, and here’s the one that really gets us. Maybe you’re thinking, “I’ve missed God.

Maybe His silence is a no. Maybe the dream was never real. I just imagined it anyway. Maybe I heard wrong.” Eee, yikes. Beloved, I have been exactly in that place, and I would say I’m in that place in some areas of my life even now, . I’ve sat on the sidelines and watched God seemingly fulfill everyone else’s dreams but mine.

I watched the women around me step into their callings, into marriages, into the momentum, their stride, while I was left literally holding the bag, wiping up the messes. The first time I remember being in that space was back [00:04:00] in the ’90s. My husband at the time decided to stop being my husband, and you know what?

He was out there pursuing his dream with a future wife that didn’t nag him all the time. He was off chasing the next chapter while I was home alone, raising kids, wondering what I had done wrong and whether God had simply just moved on without me. That place, that long ago, is where this episode was born.

And beloved, lean in because I want you to hear this before we go one step further. You cannot miss it. You can’t miss what God has for you. not unless you are in full out rebellion, running the other direction with your hands over your ears singing, “Da, da, da, da, da.” And even then, the God of all creation is chasing you down to bring you back to Himself.

We serve a God whose plans are not derailed by our detours. His ways are not our ways. His timing is not our timeline, and when we start to believe that His silence means, eh, eh, cancellation, we’ve made God too small. We put Him in that box, and He’s knocking, trying to get out.

Well, this is where we are starting with today’s episode.

Hey there. Welcome to Mom to Mom Mentoring, and if this is your first time finding us, I am so glad you’re here, because this is the podcast for the Christian mom who is done with the inspiration that fades by Thursday, who’s ready to go deep and stay there.

Every single week, we gather here together for soul-nourishing wisdom, for real conversation, and the kind of truth that meets you right in the middle of your actual life. Not the highlight reel, the real one I’m your host, Misty Hughes. I’m a certified ICF coach. I’m a mentor. I’m an international ministry leader.

I founded The Single Mom KC, and I’m the mom of four adult children. I’ve raised them and launched them, , which is its own kind of miracle. For over 25 years, I’ve walked alongside Christian women who are high capacity, deeply faithful, and quietly exhausted. I help them move out of overwhelm and into the p- peace, clarity, and God-aligned rhythms that they were actually made for.

I created the Rhythm of Life framework because I needed it first, and I teach what I’ve lived, every word of it. Speaking of that, before we go any further, I wanna make sure you know about the Becoming cohort. It is my signature 12-week group coaching experience, and it is where everything I teach on this podcast comes to life in real time, in community with other women just like you, in the exact season that you’re in right now.

We don’t just talk about becoming. We actually dig in and do the work together. If you’ve been listening to this podcast and thinking, “I need more than just an episode,” this is what more looks like. I wanna encourage you to get on the wait list for when the next cohort starts. [00:08:00] You can find it at mistyhughes.com\cohort.

The link I will put in the show notes. Hey, don’t sit on it. Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do today. This episode, it’s called Still Waiting? Give It 20 Years, Mama, and that is about the gaping gap, the place between the promise and the fulfillment, between the calling and the season, between who God says you are and who you feel like on Wednesday when nothing has changed and the dream is still there, just sitting, no life.

That gap, it can start to feel like the evidence that something has gone wrong, that something inside is wrong. Like, maybe you’re not getting it right. Like, everyone else seems to be stepping into their destiny while little old you is sitting in the waiting room,

wondering Did I miss the memo? Hey, you didn’t miss the memo, but I want to show you from scripture, from history, from my own story exactly why the wait is not the waste, and what to do while you’re in the waiting. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Okay. To dive in to this idea of no waste in the waiting, the 20-year gap, I want to take you in the word of God, because you see, the word of God is unchangeable. It truly is the anchor of our soul. So, if you are in a space and you got your Bible app opened and ready to go, let’s do it. But if you are just listening while you are on the go, beloved, you are going to glean some nuggets as we dive in to the word of God.

Today I wanna start with Sarah. 25 years from promise to Isaac. She was 90 years old. The promise didn’t arrive until it was humanly, get this, impossible. Yeah. That was intentional. The story of Sarah has always given me hope. She’s named right there in the Faith Heroes Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11, and here’s been a fun, okay-Jesus-I-hear-you reminder that He planted in Hebrews 11:11, I think just for me.

See, sometimes I’ll be doing my own thing, going through life, minding my own business, and suddenly I’ll start to see, you got it, 11:11 on the clocks, on doorposts, all over the place. It’s like my little rainbow in the sky, my reminder, oh, yeah, God’s faithful. Don’t quit believing. And even at an old age He can birth His promise through me.

Isn’t that awesome? I love Sarah. Thank you, Jesus, for her example in the Word of God. Then we have David. He was anointed king as a teenager, a ruddy youth, by Samuel, but he didn’t sit on the throne for at least 15 years. He spent that time in caves, running for his life, serving a king who literally [00:12:00] wanted him dead.

What about Noah? Scholars estimate his journey from promise to fulfillment was 55 to 75 years building the ark. Every hammer drive, every nail, I don’t even know if they had nails back then, every log that was hewn, he had to walk in faith before a single drop of rain fell. imagine building a boat when there was no rain in the forecast, his neighbors watching, probably laughing the whole time. Maybe you know Joseph, and you can identify with him. He was the dreamer, right? 13 years from the dream to the palace, thrown in prison, in the pit, thought to be dead, slavery, then the fulfillment.

When it seemed like there was no hope, God stepped in. Every single one of these people, and many more in the Word of God, had a gap between the promise and the fulfillment. Not days, not weeks, not even months, but years, decades, and not idle years. These were hard years, years of formation.

Now, as you can tell, the Word of God Is my sustenance. It’s unchangeable, and in times where I have been in sinking sand, God has been faithful to give me a cord of loving kindness from the Word and wrap it around my heart and lift me up out of the miry clay and put my feet back on a rock, that is Jesus.

So, let’s look at another passage, Isaiah 61. This is where we get to press in to the reality that God is really working something out in us so that He can work those mighty deeds through us. Isaiah 61:3. It says, “Then they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.” That word then is doing a lot of work there. What has to happen before then? Well, you can read what happens before we get to the then.

It’s where the Spirit of the Lord comes and sets us free. He opens prison doors. He changes our mourning into laughing. He is doing a work in us before the then. An oak tree takes 20 to 50 years to reach maturity. Remember our heroes from the Bible? Yeah, 20 to 50 years. The root system grows down before the tree grows up.

The strength that you see in those mighty oaks is only possible because of a deep underground, invisible [00:16:00] root system that was happening while it looked like nothing was happening. Beloved, the in-between time is not wasted. It’s your root time. What looks like stalling is often deepening. What feels like delay is often God building what the calling is going to require.

You’re not a late bloomer. You are an oak, and oaks take time. But here’s the thing, even in the process of that root system being established, of all the fullness coming forth from the mighty righteous oak, things are happening. Yeah, the root system, like we said, it’s going deep, and, and outward growth is also happening.

It’s almost invisible to the naked eye. You almost don’t recognize or realize it’s even going on. I had a dear friend once who moved away pre-divorce. We didn’t talk much, and I didn’t hear from her after my husband left back in ’98. About, I don’t know, 2002 or something like that, I finally reached out to her, and we reconnected and reestablished our friendship.

Something she said, she marveled at my growth as a woman of God. You see, in the early years of our friendship, she planted a lot of seeds. We would walk and talk. She was, a wise woman. She had grown up in knowing who God is. She was a mighty oak, and I was a sapling, and she was watering my soul.

And then we didn’t see each other, and in that time, I’d grown. When we reconnected, she bore witness of a deeper, stronger, more resilient oak of righteousness stood before her. In the winters of life, God is often fulfilling His greatest dream and desire in us.

I want to remind you that delay is not detour, but there is a difference. So here is the distinction that will enable you, empower you, encourage you to act differently in the waiting. Delay The promise is still the promise. The timing just hasn’t arrived yet. You wait. You wait with your hands open, wondering what Jesus is doing, but leaving, your hands open. A detour? God has redirected. Maybe there’s something that He sees in the way that you’re going that is not safe or good, and so He redirects you. Maybe the redirection is for an area of growth that, you’re not aware of. There’s something new and different in that redirection, and you follow with your hands open.

Both, beloved, require open hands, and neither require giving up. Habakkuk 2:3. Yes, more from the Word of God. “Though it [00:20:00] linger, wait for it. It will certainly come and will not delay.” I feel like that is a verse that, that God’s been whispering to you in this season, and He wants you to hear it loud and clear.

Maybe paste it on your mirror so you’re reminded of His faithfulness in the waiting room. “Though it linger, beloved, wait for it. It will certainly come and will not delay.” The tension in that verse, you can feel it. It both lingers, and it will not delay. It’s not a contradiction. It’s about God’s timing, which operates outside of our calendar.

Okay, here’s a practical question I have for you. You thought I was done with all my questions. Has God ever told you that your dream was canceled, eh, exit out? Or have you just been waiting so long it started to feel that way? I was given the Give It 20 Years Challenge years ago, not for my marriage, but for my identity, for a life in God, to be free from the, the torment of my mind, from the question of- “I’m not good enough,” from the, “I miss God,” from the trying to prove it to God.

I wanted freedom that comes in Christ Jesus, and I felt like biblically speaking, it was a promise that God had given me. I felt like a desire of my heart was so earnest that God would definitely fulfill it, and then I heard, “Give it 20 years.” And that felt like a life sentence. I thought, “How can I live this way for 20 years?”

But looking back, it was really God being merciful m- with me. He was telling me the truth about how long transformation takes. Wasn’t to discourage me, but to release me from the pressure of feeling like I need to arrive by Friday. I need to have been transformed as soon as possible. Here I stand before you.

I am totally not perfect. I am still becoming, but I am not who I was in that pit. Not even close. The Misty I was created to be, she’s here. She’s taken a while. She’s still forming. She was worth every year of the wait.

This Misty would like to invite you to do two things this week. First, name it out loud. Write down that dream, that calling, that earnest desire that you’ve been quiet about, the one that you’ve stopped talking about because it hurt less. Just write it. Don’t plan it. Don’t pitch it. Let it exist on paper again, and then tell God you still remember.

Just breathe a one-sentence prayer, “Lord, I still believe you put this in me. I’m still here with my open hands. I’m still waiting. Teach me what you’re growing in me while I [00:24:00] wait.” I used to pray, “Let my roots go down deeply.” Into the knowledge of your love. Because, Jesus, I know when I have that deep root system in you, in your love for me, in that river of life, that I will bear fruit in every season.

And beloved, that has been my lifelong dream. Now, before I let you go, I want to leave you with the one thing I hope that you carry away from today’s episode. Your delay is not God’s denial. Say that again if you need to with me. My delay is not God’s denial. The waiting is not evidence that God has changed His mind.

It is not evidence that you were wrong about the calling or about the dream. The waiting is not punishment, and it is not failure. For some of you, the waiting is the most sacred and important work of your entire journey of becoming, and you won’t fully understand it until you’re standing on the other side of it looking back.

 I know it’s hard to hold on right now, and I know some of you have been waiting a long time. So did Sarah. So did Abraham and David. So did every oak tree that’s ever stood strong in a storm.

Keep growing. I would love for you to do these two small things this week. First, subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already. It costs you nothing, and it means you won’t miss a single of these soul-satisfying episodes. I’ve got more coming that I think that you’re going to need and enjoy. Second, I would love for you to share this episode with one woman that you know has gone quiet about that dream.

You know who she is. You thought of her name today while you were listening. Just send it to her. You don’t even have to explain it. Just say, “Hey friend, this one’s for you.” That’s enough. I wanna close today with one of my favorite passages. It’s from Philippians 1:6, and I want you to hear it like it’s written directly to you.

I am certain that God who began the good work within me will continue his work until it is finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Yeah. He who began it, he’s going to finish it. You’re not a project that God abandoned. You are a work that he is actively doing. You are his workmanship. The fact that you’re still here, still listening, still hoping, that’s evidence of his faithfulness, not your failure.

You know, I always close in the same way. When you shine, you give others permission to shine too. And today, I’m going to say it, but I’m going to say it with a little twist. The woman who is still waiting, who hasn’t given up on what God has put in her, who keeps showing up even when nothing has changed, she’s [00:28:00] already shining, even in the waiting, especially in the waiting.

Don’t stop shining. Next week, we’re going to go a layer deeper. We’re going to talk about the woman who has been known by everyone, but truly seen by no one, not even herself. If you’ve ever wondered who you are underneath all the roles that you carry, you are going to want to be here for that one.

Remember, hit subscribe so you don’t miss it. Hey there, I am Misty Hughes, and you’ve been listening to Mom to Mom Mentoring. Now, go shine.

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