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During today's conversation on Backport's Theology,

Allie and I are hanging out with one of my dear friends,

Don Cherie Wilkerson,

who's really gifted at something I really struggle with, and that is waiting.

The first time I met Don Shri about 10 years ago, she and her husband, Pastor Rich Wilkerson,

were in the middle of a very long season of infertility, and yet she was somehow pregnant with hope.

When I asked Don Shri how she held on to genuine hope and joy,

after so many years of heartbreak and disappointment, she told me that God was teaching her

how to live in the wait, how he was teaching her to view waiting as preparation instead of

punishment. What you're hoping for, perhaps even desperate for today, may be different

than Don Shere's desire for a family, but we know you're waiting for something too. In her new book,

Slow Burn, The Work and Wonder of the Weight, she frames it like this. Maybe for you, it's the healing process of a bodily injury or

relational wound. The surgery and chemo you're persevering through and wondering if it will be

effective. The dream job that has yet to open up or the life partner you've not yet found.

It could be post-divorce stability or relief from the grief you're longing for,

or the clear leading about a big life change and what you're meant to do next. Waiting is inescapable.

And while we might feel like a whole lot of nothing is going on in a slow burn, we couldn't be more wrong. There most definitely

is something going on. Don Chri quotes T.S. Eliot in her book, and he wrote, the darkness

declares the glory of light. We absolutely understand and can identify with how some of you have all but

lost hope and what can feel like the darkness of waiting for something or someone. But there really is

light at the end of the tunnel, y'all. God has not forgotten us. And because of his immutable presence and grace,

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