The Eleventh Hour

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Ever feel like you’ve waited longer than you can possibly bear for a breakthrough or resolution?

This has happened far too often in my life. But I have never felt it so acutely than when my children were on sleep strike as infants, when my husband and I are having a disagreement, when I was waiting for passports ahead of a trip to Greece during a global pandemic, or when I was unemployed.

When my boys were babies, they did not sleep. I dreaded the evening. Sunsets gave me anxiety anticipating a long, lonely night where it felt like I was the only person awake in the whole world. There was a lot I didn’t know but there was also the reality of what babies are like: they need to eat at night and they need help sleeping. At least mine did. My boys especially, were essentially on sleep strike for the first six months of their lives. You’d think there was some kind of competition to sleep as little as possible each night and I don’t know if that made me the winner or the loser. I remember pacing for hours with a crying baby or lying awake listening to them struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep. I remember begging God in those moments for just a few hours of consecutive sleep only to be met with another piercing cry to attend to. Well, just when I thought I couldn’t handle one more sleepless night, it would happen: a few hours in a row of uninterrupted sleep. Thank you, Lord!

My husband and I have the same views and values on life for the most part, but vastly different ways of getting there and expressing them. We’re also both just a tiny bit stubborn, so it can be challenging when one of us is deeply independent and the other is a princess. I’ll leave it to you to guess who’s who!

Sometimes our grumpiness can last a few days, and I, for one, am not okay with that. I want to talk it out, and fight it out, and find a resolution yesterday. My better half prefers a drama-free zone and will avoid conflict like his life depends on it.

Sometimes our disagreements last longer than I think I can bear, and this is when I get real deep in my feels. I tend to become pessimistic and wonder how we’ll ever work out this problem. And just when I think I can’t stand it any longer, we do. In the eleventh hour. At the last second.

God brings insight, peace, understanding, and reconciliation just when I think I can’t last any longer. But a big part of it has to do with my own surrender to God first. When I feel like I can’t endure the tumult of our situation any longer, I finally turn to God, and the God of Peace fills me with a peace that is beyond my own understanding.

Passports and pandemics don’t mix. The most stressful eleventh hour moment I’ve experienced was in the middle of a certain global pandemic that I’d love to keep as a distant memory. My immediate family, joined by my extended family, went on a trip-of-a-lifetime to Greece, where my family of origin is from.

We spent nearly an entire year preparing for this trip, factoring plenty of time to acquire the updated passports we needed. Yet still, it came down to the wire. The closest passport office is nearly an hour away from our home in Leamington, and I visited that office multiple times, with my preschool-aged daughter in tow, desperate to find a way to expedite the process. In the eleventh hour and by divine providence, I was connected with a member of the House of Commons and the representative for our region who vouched for me and helped me cut through some red tape. I have to give credit to God for all of it, though, because I stand by that verse in the book of James that says, “every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father.” 

We got our passports the day before we left for Montreal to board our flights from there. A moment I never want to repeat!

What felt longer than any of these eleventh hour trials, was being let go from my job and waiting and waiting for what was to come next. Losing my job was a shock. I was completely blindsided when my boss called to tell me that they could no longer afford to keep me. The company was struggling all through the global pandemic and couldn’t justify keeping my position. About an hour after I got off the phone, however, I had an encounter with God that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I still remember where I was, washing dishes and looking out my kitchen window. I heard it as clear as day. God told me this: “You outgrew that job a long time ago. You would’ve stayed there forever if I hadn’t removed you. I have something better for you. Just wait.” 

And wait I did. It felt like I was waiting forever. I waited for what felt like a lifetime. I spent a lot of time in silent prayer during that season. About 20 minutes every single morning sitting on my living room floor, staring out the window, watching the sunrise.

That silence felt like therapy.

Even though it felt like I had nothing to show for it. It was healing something in me while also strengthening me for something different. Day after day week after week month after month, God kept saying the same thing—wait. Not yet. Wait wait wait wait that’s all I heard over and over for months. Until finally, it was time.

Finally, my love/hate relationship with the eleventh hour manifests mostly in my spiritual walk. I read this story once about a Catholic nun who was invited to speak about contemplative prayer at a pastors conference. She gave them John 3:16 to meditate on for 20 minutes and sent them off to pray and meditate on their own. That was it. That was the whole talk. The pastors were sceptical at best and annoyed at worst. They were giving up their time as pastors, running huge churches to attend a conference with the hopes of taking away some innovative ideas and fresh strategies. This little nun was asking them to read John 3:16–the most famous verse in the Bible. So famous it’s familiar. So most of us hardly give it any thought, and neither did they. But they humored the older lady and went through the motions. Each pastor found a space for solitude and prayer and meditating on the verse. At the end of the 20 minutes, they slowly trickled back into the room where the nun was waiting for them. All she did was ask them to raise their hands in response to a series of statements that applied to them. 

Raise your hand if you got a fresh word from God about this verse.

- Every hand went up. 

Raise your hand if this fresh insight came to you within the first five minutes of contemplation.

- No hand was raised. 

Raise your hand if what you heard from the Lord came to you within the first 10 minutes.

- A handful of hands went up. 

Raise your hand if you received what God spoke about the verse in the first 15 minutes.

- A few more hands went up. 

Raise your hand if you finally heard from God in the eleventh hour. Just before we reconvened.

- Every single hand went up.

Her point was this: There is no rushing God. There’s no shortcut to spiritual growth. What God wants to do with us requires a long obedience in the same direction. And when we’re ready to hear from God within the first five minutes, he wants to take a whole lot of time to cultivate in us the fertile soil of the soul required to receive the gift he wants to give. God is never late. What he has for us is right on time. It may feel like the eleventh hour, but it’s only in hindsight that we realize—it was perfect timing.

What’s in the Ears

This is the part where I share a song or podcast I’m currently into. This song is titled, Wait on You by Elevation and Maverick City Music and it’s based on Isaiah  40:31, “but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Let me know if you check it out.

If this stirred something in you, share this post with a friend or drop a comment below. I’d love to hear what small step you’re taking towards the flourishing life today! And don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.