Don't Worry, I'll Wait

Someone recently provoked a thought that had never occurred to me before when they asked, "What if you weren't waiting on God and instead God was waiting on you?" Essentially, she meant what if you are your own adversary and stunting your own potential growth? She equated such a situation to an infant crying for a bottle of milk.  The infant cries and cries, eyes closed, and red-faced because of his (we'll go with a male infant for the example) unmet need. Unbeknownst to the infant, his mother has been trying to put the bottle in his mouth the whole time but because his eyes were closed and he became anxious, he wasn't aware that help had already arrived a while ago.  What blessings might you not be noticing?

Oftentimes, blessings come in forms other than what we imagine they should.  I believe that's why people say that God works in mysterious ways. If everything He did was obvious there would be no mystery to His works.  When we make a request known to God, we should await the answer with an open heart, an open mind, and open eyes.  At the same time, we should begin to make room in our lives for the blessing that we asked for.  If you ask God for better grades, perhaps you can make room by avoiding Single Ladies Night at the club the day before your Anatomy final. I'll give you a personal example of not realizing an answered prayer to illustrate my point.

At the age of 8, I realized that singing and songwriting were my passions.  I would sing in my room quietly and write songs in secret, sometimes shyly sharing the songs to one or two of my closest friends.  I prayed to God for increased confidence to sing to someone other than my carpet, have my voice heard by many and have my songs sung by artists in the industry.  For years I prayed and prayed, frustrated that my room's walls didn't communicate with Diddy and inform him of my musical ability so that he would sign me at once to Bad Boy.  Of course that frustration was a stretch but you get the idea - I was waiting for an external force to actualize my dreams instead of forcing my internal self to put my dreams in motion.  I didn't realize that God already answered my prayers, but my eyes weren't open to realize that help had arrived.

How, you ask? During my freshman year of high school, my church decided to put together a youth gospel choir. This is my chance, I thought.  All I have to do is go to practices, sing, and become Whitney Houston. Piece of cake. I laugh now at the memory. At the first practice, the choir director asked me to sing so that he could figure out if I was an alto or soprano and also to determine my vocal range.  When I tell you my body froze in fear and my mouth would not open, I mean it. Eventually, I sang but it was as a quiet a mouse (an analogy I've never understood because you can hear those creepy things kilometers away). For the duration of my time in that choir I shied away from singing solos and I sang so low with the choir that I literally couldn't hear my own voice.  When I would go home after practice, I would sing loud, sing confidently, and sing beautifully.  I would get so angry with God and ask Him why my singing confidence only appeared behind closed doors and ask him whether or not He heard my prayers clearly.

It's funny how we can demand so much of God and so little of ourselves.  It dawned on me that God answered my prayers by giving me opportunities to sing.  The problem was that I wasn't taking the opportunities.  My father once told me that when you ask God for help to overcome an obstacle, He presents you with more instances of that obstacle.  Basically, you can only truly overcome the obstacle by facing it and dealing with it. Singing confidence would only be obtained by me doing just that - singing at every opportunity I got.  I know, I know. You're saying elementary, my dear Watson (hopefully someone has picked up a book and read Sherlock Holmes).  Though it's common sense to me now, it wasn't common sense to me then.

Once I realized that the problem was my own personal fears and immobility and not a lack of opportunities, things began to change.  Fast forward to 2011, I wrote a song and recorded it on my laptop about 2 weeks ago.  Intuition told me to send it to one of my mentors, but I wasn't sure why.  He responded saying that he loved the song and that it came at a perfect time because he recently met an r&b artist that was in need of material to sing.  He forwarded the song to her and she liked it. Two days later, my mentor reached out to me and asked if I would like to sing backup for the artist. I gave him an emphatic and resounding yes!  Indeed, God was waiting on me all along :-)