I am a planner. I want to be very clear about that upfront, because it’s important context for everything that comes after.

I have a notes app that would genuinely impress a project manager. I make lists for my lists. I plan meals, I plan weekends, I plan what I’m going to say in conversations before I actually have them — which Scott finds endearing and I call efficient. When I have a goal, I make a plan. When I have a problem, I figure out the steps. That’s just how I’m wired.

So being in a season where the most important thing in my life has no timeline, no clear next step, no checklist I can work through — has been a lot.

I won’t tell you I handled it gracefully at first. I didn’t. I did what I always do: I tried to plan my way through it. I researched. I made timelines. I gave myself milestones and then felt behind when life didn’t follow the schedule I’d written in my notes app like the universe was going to consult it.

It took a while — longer than I’d like to admit — before I stopped fighting the in-between and started learning how to actually live in it.

What “Trusting the Timing” Actually Felt Like

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about faith in a waiting season: knowing the right thing and feeling the right thing are two completely different experiences.

People say “just trust the timing” like it’s a switch you flip. Like you can simply decide to release the grip you have on the outcome and then — release it. And maybe some people can do that. I couldn’t. What I could do was say the words and mean them intellectually while my stomach still felt tight every time I thought about the thing I was waiting on.

There was a period where I realized I was performing peace rather than actually feeling it. I was saying the right things — to Scott, to friends, to myself — and I believed them, I really did. But there was a gap between what I knew to be true and what I felt on a random Tuesday at 10pm when the house was quiet and my brain wouldn’t stop running the numbers on something I had no control over.

What I want to say to anyone who’s been in that gap: you’re allowed to find the waiting hard. That’s not weakness. That’s not a sign your faith isn’t real. You can trust God’s timing and still have days where the trusting feels impossible. Those two things can coexist — and pretending one away doesn’t make you more faithful, it just makes you more alone in it.

Three Things That Actually Helped

I’m not going to give you a tidy little list of feel-good platitudes, because I don’t think that’s what you’re here for. These are the three things that genuinely moved something in me during the waiting — not fixed it, but moved it.

Faith as a practice, not a feeling

There’s a verse I kept coming back to — one I’d read a hundred times before but that started to land differently in this season. Isaiah 41:10 “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Faith, I’ve learned, is less about feeling it and more about returning to it. Showing up to it even when it feels like you’re just going through the motions. Eventually the motions become something more.

Routine as an anchor

When the big thing feels completely out of your control, the small things matter more than they should — in the best way. My morning coffee. Cooking dinner. Taking Annabelle to school. These ordinary rhythms gave me something to hold onto when the extraordinary felt impossibly far away. The routine didn’t distract me from the waiting; it kept me present in the life I have right now while I wait for the one that’s coming.

One person who held the hope when I couldn’t

On the days I struggled to believe it was going to work out, Scott believed it enough for both of us. That’s not a small thing. That’s everything, actually. Having one person — whether it’s your spouse, a friend, a sister — who holds the hope when yours runs thin is its own kind of grace. I didn’t always have the words to say what I needed. But he seemed to know anyway. If you’re in a season of waiting, I hope you have a person like that. And if you don’t yet, I hope you find one.

The Moment It Clicked

There wasn’t one dramatic turning point. It was quieter than that.

It was a Sunday morning — one of those slow ones where Annabelle was still asleep and the house was still and Scott and I just sat there for a minute without talking. And something in me just… settled.

Not because anything had changed. Nothing had changed. The waiting was still the waiting. But in that moment I understood something I hadn’t quite gotten before: the in-between isn’t a mistake in the plan. It’s not a delay or a detour or evidence that something went wrong. It’s just a season. And seasons, by definition, don’t last forever.

I’d been treating the waiting like it was the problem to be solved. Like if I could just find the right approach, the right mindset, the right scripture to read each morning, I could get through it faster. But that Sunday I stopped trying to get through it and started trying to just be in it.

I’m still learning that. But I’m better at it than I was.

The Thing I’ve Been Waiting On

I’ve been a little vague throughout this post — intentionally, but also because the vagueness is part of the truth of it. Waiting seasons don’t always come with tidy labels. You don’t always know what to call the thing you’re carrying.

But I want to tell you what mine is.

The thing I’ve been waiting on is adoption.

Scott and I are hoping to grow our family through private adoption. We’re home study approved, we’ve done the work, and we’re in that particular kind of waiting that has no timeline and no checklist — which, as you now know, is genuinely its own challenge for someone like me.

I’ll share more in the next post — the full story of how we got here, what the process has looked like, and what our family is hoping for. But for now, I just wanted to say this:

The waiting is real. Some days it’s heavy. And it’s okay.

We’re trusting that the right story is already on its way to us. And I think — for the first time in a while — I actually feel that, not just know it.

If you’re in your own season of waiting right now — whatever you’re waiting on — I see you. Drop a comment below and tell me what’s been helping. I read every single one.