the difference between ready for it and wanting for it.

I found out recently that there is a harsh, blaring difference between wanting for something and being ready for something. Walking around telling people how badly you want something, and how frustrated you are that you don’t have it, doesn’t mean your hands are ready to catch it. I recently had something show up at my doorstep that I’d been waiting a long time for. It was perfect, it was evidence God was listening to my prayers, I thought, “Yesyesyes.” I was so sure that this was my moment; I stepped out of my front door, put one foot in front of the other, and absolutely froze. I couldn’t move. All of a sudden, I turned from wanting it, to wanting to want it. You know that feeling? Once removed from the actual desire itself, just one degree shy of being there. Where something seems so good that you know you should reach for it, but something inside of you curles backwards? That’s where I was. I didn't want it anymore, I only wanted to want it.

You might say, "Well that’s fear." And you’d be right. Part of it was fear. A lot of it was fear. I thought, “Okay, I’ve just gotta tackle this fear to the ground. Get over it by going straight through it and clearing it out.” So, I tried. I really tried. I prayed desperately. I asked God to reveal how He saw me, how He saw this plan resolving for me. I asked Him to change my heart so that I could go fearlessly. Over and over, I asked Him to do all of the work. I was so confused how this could be something I wanted for so long and yet felt totally unprepared for.

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It was a lot like telling your friends that you were dying to host a dinner party, never shutting up about it, making sure everyone in your social circle knew how badly you wanted to host one fabulous, exquisite night. And then your friends ring your doorbell, ready to be hosted, ready to give you their part of what you asked for. They show up, but you've done nothing to prep for your part of the evening. Your table isn’t set, you don’t have the wineglasses, and you certainly haven’t prepared a meal. You wonder if you should welcome them in and haphazardly throw something together, all the while apologizing that it’s such a mess; or if you should thank them for coming, tell them you love them, but admit you’ve been asking for something you’re not prepared for.

Therein lies the difference between wanting something and actually being ready for it: we can ask for the dinner party all day long. Our friends will show up. But if we don’t set the table, if we don’t prepare the food, then we’re asking, we're wanting, but we're not ready.

And that’s what I realized I had been doing. Sure, I had a lot of fear. I discerned like my life depended on it, and eventually got to a place where I was able to dethrone the fear. I looked it in the eye, heard what it had to say, and eventually found the strength to move it out of the driver's seat. I let it sit at my feet, not completely annihilated, but tamed. And right before I went for the "yes", I seized up. Something crashed through the floor of my heart and torpedoed whatever peace I thought I found in saying "yes." I made the hard decision to listen to that anxious crash. Determined that my heart knew something I didn’t, I allowed myself to say “no.” I felt joy and peace wash over me with the assurance that this was the decision I could rest in. Not the decision I thought I wanted to make or was supposed to make, but the one I needed to make. A choice I could rest in because I had discerned prayerfully, faithfully, and with the full intention of following God no matter what my answer was; that I could be at peace knowing the Lord transcends earthly frailties and circumstances.

But I wanted to be sure that the next time this opportunity came around, I'd be...not so panicky, not so without peace -- that I'd be as ready as I could be. I finally got honest and asked myself, “What have I been doing to prepare my heart for this?” Faithfully – joyfully even – I’d left the timing of it up to God and then forgotten about it. I'd trusted Him with it so completely that I’d forgotten about the possibility of reciprocal work. I had put my desire in an envelope, slipped it in a mailbox to Heaven, and skipped off. Don’t get me wrong, the trust of that is beautiful. But my lack of willful participation, not so much. God listened. He was faithful to me as I was faithful to Him. He was the friend who showed up to my dinner party after I wouldn’t stop talking about it. But I didn’t set the table, or the menu. I didn’t put any thought into preparing the actual event. I just figured that when the guests showed up, I’d be ready by default. Things inside my home -- inside my heart -- would just fall into place. I wanted it, I had asked for it, so I surely thought I'd be ready.

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But, I was wrong. And naive. For the Lord made us dynamic beings -- ones who must prepare for the journey He lays out for us, just as much as we must ask Him to reveal it. See, there’s a fine line between trusting the Lord’s providence with the circumstances in our life, and being a conscious, willful participant. You don’t have to know what each and every step is, you don't have to know what preparing your heart looks like exactly, but you do have to be present in the process and ask to be instructed. Even if you don’t know what the menu will be, you still have to sit down and ask for help making the grocery list.

Simply wanting is not enough preparation.

There is work to be done. Down in the pits, where desire fuels us into assembling our tools, that's where we're meant to reside until we arrive at 'the thing'.

And I'll warn you: there is a very real balancing act between the myth of perfect readiness and gathering enough tools to build as you go. Most big things in life we aren’t perfectly ready for. If we waited until we were perfectly ready, chances are we’d end up not doing things more often than actually doing them. But we can't be passive with God. We have to know that our relationship with Him is reciprocal. In His perfection, He will take care of us. He wants to grant us our desires. But perfect trust doesn’t mean sitting around expecting the Lord to read our lines for us. It doesn’t mean that the preparation of our hearts will perfectly align with the timing of ‘the thing’ just because we think that's how it should work.

Preparedness is a larger part of the deal than we'd like to admit. He can -- and will -- lay out our perfect purpose. But if we do not work to ready ourselves for it, we may be too scared/distracted/fill in the blank to go. Our work is a crucial ingredient that we erroneously leave as an optional variable in our prayer life. Sometimes that preparation just means praying for the readiness to know you won't be fully ready when the time comes, and that's okay. I'm not claiming it's all up to us. Yes, He does the heart changing, and yes, He illuminates the neon 'work in progress' sign -- but, it's our responsibility to be present beneath the neon glow and stake ownership in the process.

Set your table for the Lord as best as you know how. Being ready doesn't mean without doubt, without hesitation, it doesn't mean perfection. It just means vowing to pack our tool box and vowing to be present.