Christians talk about "waiting on the Lord" a lot. Waiting for God to answer their prayers, waiting to hear from Him before making a decision. We sing about it, send greeting cards about it, and so on. But are we waiting on Him, or is He waiting on us most of the time?
As a homeschooler, no big yellow bus rumbles down the road to announce the beginning of the school day. Getting my "class" to sit down, pick up their books, and get started on their assignments is a daily experience akin to herding fleas. (Mind you, these aren't tiny elementary tots who can be physically manuevered into their seats. These are teens and a preteen!)
This week we've been jumping through the state of Colorado's hoops and taking standardized tests, as the law requires. I've also been working some additional hours at the local paper for a special section, necessitating a tighter than usual time schedule.
By Friday morning, as my kiddos bumbled around in a sleepy stupor and pretended there wasn't anything to eat for breakfast, I reached a point of uncomfortable frustration.
"I have things to do! I can't wait around for them!" I thought.
And then the Holy Spirit spoke up on the inside of me. "That's how the Father feels, too, everytime you put off obeying Him because you have your own agenda, your own plan, and you've chosen to put your wishes first."
You could meditate for days on the truth that God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, isn't in some state of suspended animation in heaven. He's not hibernating, and He's not taking a break. God has things planned! He has days that have been ordered and outlined since before the foundation of the world. That's such an amazing thought.
Our Heavenly Father has stuff He wants to get done, and a great deal of it depends on our cooperation to be fellow workers together with Him in the earth. When we don't follow instructions, He has to wait, and wait, and wait. Making other people wait for us is selfish. Making God wait for us is foolish.
What was the last thing God asked you to do? What was the last assignment you were given? Have you done it? Or is God sitting behind His heavenly desk, tapping His toe, rolling His eyes, and saying to Himself, "I am patient, I am kind ... My mercies are new every morning ... I am patient ..."

Forgive us, Lord, for making you wait on us like little children. Help us to grow up out of that selfish immaturity and to make Your assignments, Your goals, our priority! Thank You for Your immeasurable grace and mercy in Christ Jesus. Amen.

"What do you mean, 'I have PMS?'"
For one or two days (at least) a month, I wake up wearing "ugly glasses." They are the opposite of "rose-colored glasses." These goggles make everything look atrocious.
I look ugly. My clothes look weird. My house looks filthy, the yard trashy, my children onery, and my charming husband starts to look like an ogre. I see things I dislike everywhere around me and struggle to change them. This results in hours of "angry cleaning," which involves lots of stomping, cabinet slamming, vacuum banging, self-pity, and general misery. If I'm dressing to go somewhere, it means my entire wardrobe will be relegated to a heap on my bed, or the closet floor, in search of something that doesn't look "awful." Is any of this ringing true with any of you female readers? And if you're a guy, maybe it will help you understand your wife or girlfriend or daughter or mother!
I surmise these glasses are caused by a nasty episode of PMS (commonly known as Pre-Menstrual Syndrome, a.k.a. Psychotic Mood Shift, Puffy Mid-Section, and my personal favorite: Potential Murder Suspect, all from funnyandjokes.com). I've recently learned that "if your PMS is noticed by those around you, it's probably PMDD." I haven't even tried to figure that one out. I think it means PMS double-dog. Like a double-dog-dare?
After years of enduring these "ugly" days I had an epiphany while I sniveled over the condition of my bathroom. The revelation is not new, and you've probably heard it before: "Your perception is your reality."
Just like certain eye problems affect your depth perception, PMS goggles cause a change in your "reality perception." Now, acknowledging this didn't change the symptoms, but it certainly gave me some hope! If these "goggles" are a side effect of a temporary physical condition, then maybe I'm not a hopeless housekeeper, a terrible mother, and a lousy wife! I haven't instantly transformed into a frump with an IQ of 18.5, and my face hasn't really changed it's size or shape overnight. It's all just a perception, and tomorrow is a new day!
My question is this: If these physical changes produce such a dramatic effect on my perception of reality, what else is influencing my perceptions of the world around me? Am I yielding my emotions, my beliefs, my actions, to some external influence, instead of being influenced by God within? I read a little book many years ago about dealing with PMS as a Christian woman. The author, whose name I cannot recall, said, "Just because you have PMS symptoms does not give you the right to stop acting like a follower of Christ." Ouch.
Here's the good news: If you know your perceptions are off, you can let Christ compensate for your lack of accurate perception! It sounds easy, but in practice it's a "battle royale," as my youngest likes to say.
I wear contacts or glasses every day. Without them, I'm legally blind. I have to use "visual aids" to compensate for my physical weakness. Jesus is my "perception aid." When someone (or everyone) is irritating me, if I allow Christ's perception of that individual (even if it's ME) to color mine, my feelings will change.

Talk about preaching to the choir. I think this post was for me!

I'm sure you've heard about the Somali pirates terrorizing the west African coast. What does this have to do with finishing what we start? Just think about the last time you heard a lot about Somalia in the news. It was in the early 1990s. Somalia was engaged in a violent civil war that caused severe famine throughout the country. The United States sent troops to make sure there was a secure channel for humanitarian aid to reach the victims of the war. Operation Restore Hope was successful, and most of the U.S. troops were replaced by a United Nations peacekeeping force in May 1993. A month later, Somali militia attacked Pakistan Army troops in Mogadishu. At the close of the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993, 18 American troops were dead, and more than 1,000 Somalis. In March 1995, the UN withdrew Operation United Shield, "having suffered significant casualties, and with the rule of government still not restored." Wikipedia
In other words, nobody finished the job. Maybe because the expected outcome was never clearly stated. Is that one of the reasons we have outlaw bands of marauding pirates trolling the coast like sharks out for a kill?
Iraq is another example. The U.S. went into Iraq to deal with Saddam Hussein in 1990. Did we finish the job? Well, we left the man responsible for the invasion of Kuwait in power and had to go back and do the finish work, more than a decade later.
My husband is a contractor (and a pastor). On nearly every job I ask, "Are you almost done?" He frequently replies, "Almost, just the finish work left." Invariably, the finish work, taking care of all the little details and making sure the job is done, takes as long or longer than the big stuff, like framing the structure. Finish work is not his favorite part of construction, because it seems to move so slowly, with so little tangible reward for the effort.
A friend of mine is also a contractor's wife. Her husband built her a beautiful home. When I visited her after the home's completion, I was surprised to see some of the interior doors were still missing doorknobs. There were exposed wires hanging from the ceiling in a bedroom because he hadn't "gotten around" to hooking up the fixture, which was in a box on the floor. I laughed. Quietly.
In tennis and golf, it's called "followthrough." If you don't master the followthrough on your swing, the ball will never end up where you expect it to. I can't think of a single task we do in life that doesn't involve some kind of finish work, or followthrough.
During the era of feathered hair, I spent at least 45 minutes a day coaxing my stick-straight hair into the coveted Farrah Fawcett style. When I rushed in for breakfast, my mother would ask me, "Did you brush the back of your head? It looks like a rat's nest." I only messed with the front of my hair, and left the rest. Poor followthough.
I love to paint my house. However, we have several pieces of furniture that are too heavy, or too much of a hassle, to move. So I simply paint around them. Six months later, when it's time to rearrange again, I endure the giggles and groans when the big blank spot of the former room color is exposed and I have to get out the paint can again. Failure to finish.
Those are fairly minor (and funny) examples, but parenting, marriage, pastoring, and our jobs all have finish work.
I'm rewriting the final few chapters of my first completed manuscript. Putting those words on screen, having them critiqued, making the changes, etc., is a grueling process. I want to hurry up and move on to the next project! I'm tired of this work-in-progress and it's not even done yet!
My teenagers are in the "finish work" phase. Daily, it seems, we're tweaking some system or function, and sometimes gasping in horror when we realize we forgot an important detail - like failing to teach the new driver to check the oil.
Particularly in relationships, finish work and followthrough can be hard. If my child is dealing with an embarrassing problem, my flesh doesn't want to go back to him a week later and ask him how he's doing. If my husband agreed to help around the house and two weeks later has conveniently forgotten what "mopping" is, it's easier to be mad and do it myself than it is to remind him of our previous discussion.
What's the last thing you started that you haven't finished? What did you set out to do, but haven't followed through to completion? Before you jump headfirst into the latest new project, go back and finish up the old ones. You'll feel better for it, even if it's a little thing, like cleaning out a desk drawer, or sending a card to a friend instead of leaving it unstamped on your desk until next year's birthday rolls around. Finish, followthrough, and you won't have to worry so much about those old tyrants of strife and dissension rising up to torment your family, or suddenly finding financial pirates at your door because you neglected to finish balancing the checkbook.
Finish something today, or this week. Something you've been putting off, procrastinating, or avoiding. That uncomfortable conversation with a co-worker, the pile of paperwork building up on your desk, or the appointment for your annual physical you last made three years ago!
Jesus finished, and He's our example. Take Philippians 4:13 to heart when it comes to finishing what is set before you, "I can do all things (even finish!) through Christ who strengthens me."
Leave a comment and let me know how it goes!

Teenagers are God's way of inoculating parents against "empty nest" syndrome. There are three and a half teenagers living in my house right now--three boys, one girl. The "half" is 11 going on 17. He desperately wants to be included in all the activities of his older brothers and sister. The others are 18, 16 and nearly 15.
Don't get me wrong; I love these kids. They are the fruit of my womb; my gifts from God; His heritage to me. But as they've gotten older, bigger, and stinkier, something in me has changed. I no longer dread the idea of them moving out.
I know I'll miss them. I know I'll probably cry the first time I only have to cook for two instead of a party of six. But I won't miss the scores of belongings scattered throughout my home on every surface. I won't miss the towering pile of laundry that threatens to engulf me every week, or the search for dirty dishes that have been carted off to bedrooms and left to decompose.
I threatened to hide the Easter eggs in the boys' room this year, thinking it might force them to really clean the place up. But the idea of a rotting multi-colored egg buried somewhere among the grubby socks and scraps of paper convinced me to relent.
I'm tempted to feel guilty for looking forward to the close of this season of parenting. Does it make me a negligent parent to want them to grow up and move out on their own? No, I think the Lord is preparing my heart for their departure, protecting me from that pit of despair our modern culture has termed "empty nest syndrome."
If we really want to know about the empty nest, we ought to look at the eagle. Mother eagles rip the soft feathers from their own breasts to cushion the nest before they lay their eggs. The parent eagles take turns sitting on the eggs, feeding the tiny, defenseless eaglets as they grow and develop, providing "toys" for the eaglets to play with in the sprawling nest. One day the mother eagle returns home and begins flinging the toys and fluff out of the nest, much to the eaglets' dismay. They don't realize by forcing them to grip the branches the nest is made from she's strengthening their legs and feet. The eagle family muddles along like this for awhile. You can almost sense the attitude of the eaglets-a little hurt, a little angry, maybe even a bit rebellious. And then, when the day comes, the mother eagle forces them out of the nest -- no, she doesn't wait for them to decide, she decides for them -- and they literally have to fly, or fall. You know what? They fly.
I guess we're in the phase where I've started throwing out the toys and fluff. I stole the cord out of the satellite receiver today and hid it so one who came home "sick" wouldn't be able to lay around and stare at the idiot box all afternoon. He experienced a miraculous recovery within hours. I'm adding responsibilities, expecting and demanding more from my eaglets, and sometimes they resist and rebel and ask "why?" But one day, when I'm sunning myself on a beach in the Caribbean, sipping a tropical drink from a fancy glass, and thoroughly enjoying my empty nest season, maybe they'll text me and say "THNKS MOM, 4 EVRYTHNG." The answer to a mother's prayer.