Every Room

I’ve spent a surprising amount of my life wondering if I was in the right room, not always literally, though sometimes that too.

The conference room where I wondered if I belonged at the table. The hospital room where time seemed to stand still. The classroom filled with girls carrying stories far heavier than their backpacks. Church sanctuaries where worship came easily, and others where I could barely find the words to sing. Living rooms where laughter spilled over dinner plates. Waiting rooms where hope felt like the only thing keeping me company.

Life, I’ve realized, is really just a series of rooms.

Some we rush toward. Some we reluctantly enter. Some we never want to leave. And some we pray our way out of.

For years, I thought the goal was finding the right room.

The room where I finally felt qualified.

The room where life made sense.

The room where everyone saw me the way I hoped they would.

The room where the work became easier, the waiting ended, and certainty finally arrived.

I spent most of my time looking through doorways instead of paying attention to the room I was already standing in.

Then, somewhere along the way, I began to notice something. God wasn’t simply leading me from room to room. He was asking me questions. Not the kind that could be answered with words. The kind that could only be answered by the way I lived.

I believe that God has placed me—and will continue to place me—in every room I am meant to enter. Not because I’ve earned the invitation. Not because I’ve always been ready. Simply because He knows what each room will ask of me… and what it will leave behind.

Some rooms have stretched me until I hardly recognized myself. Others have humbled me in ways I never would have chosen. There have been rooms where I learned how to speak with courage, and rooms where I learned the holier discipline of listening. Rooms that taught me to carry responsibility and rooms that taught me to lay it down. There were rooms that felt like answered prayers and others I spent every day asking God to let me leave. And somehow both became holy ground.

The Waiting Room

Of all the rooms I’ve occupied, I think the waiting room has been the hardest. Not the kind with uncomfortable chairs and outdated magazines. The kind where prayers seem to echo longer than answers. The room between not yet and now. The room where everyone else’s life appears to be moving while yours feels suspended in place. I’ve spent more time there than I ever wanted to.

Waiting for doors to open.

Waiting for healing.

Waiting for reconciliation.

Waiting for clarity.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

Waiting for the child to come home.

Waiting for God to make sense of something that never should have happened in the first place.

I’ve learned that waiting has a way of exposing everything we’d rather not see. Our need for control. Our fear of being forgotten. Our tendency to measure God’s faithfulness by His speed.

I wish I could tell you I waited well. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I trusted. Other times I questioned everything I thought I knew about God’s timing. I replayed every decision, searching for the place where I must have stepped outside His will. I mistook His silence for His absence. But silence and absence have never been the same thing.

The waiting room asks, “Will you trust Me before you understand Me?”

That may be the hardest question faith ever has to answer. Because I wanted God to hurry. He wanted me to grow. And those are rarely the same thing.

Looking back, I can see that the waiting room was never wasted time. It was the place where hurried prayers became steady trust. Where shallow roots reached deeper. Where my identity slowly detached itself from outcomes and attached itself to the One who never changes. Perhaps that’s why Scripture is filled with people who waited.

Abraham waited for a son.

Joseph waited in a prison.

David waited to become king.

Anna waited in the temple.

Even Jesus spent thirty quiet years before three public ones.

God has never seemed to mind the waiting room as much as we do. Maybe because He knows something we forget. Seeds spend a long time underground before anyone calls them alive. There is a holy kind of growth that happens where no one is watching. The waiting room isn’t where God puts our lives on hold. It’s where He prepares us to live them. Every room asks a different question.

The boardroom asks,

“Can I trust you with influence without letting it become your identity?”

The classroom asks,

“Will you remain teachable, even when you’re the one doing the teaching?”

The hospital room asks,

“What still matters when everything else is stripped away?”

The empty room asks,

“Who are you when no one is watching? When no one is applauding? When there is no audience to affirm you?”

The room where you’ve been overlooked asks,

“Will you believe that being unseen by people doesn’t mean you’re unseen by Me?”

The room of celebration asks,

“Will your gratitude be as deep as your prayers once were?”

The room of abundance asks,

“Will you remember the God you depended on when you had less?”

The room of heartbreak asks,

“Will you let this make you bitter, or will you let Me make you tender?”

Looking back, I don’t remember every meeting, every agenda, or every accomplishment. But it was never really about the room. It was about the question. Every question invited me to loosen my grip on certainty and tighten my grip on God. Looking back, I realize God was never simply arranging my calendar or directing my steps. He was shaping my soul.

 Every conversation.

Every disappointment.

Every celebration.

Every awkward silence.

Every seat at the table.

Every moment I wondered why I wasn’t invited at all.

Each became an opportunity for deep spiritual formation.

It makes me wonder if we’ve spent too much time chasing the next room while overlooking the quiet work God is doing in the one we’re already standing in. Maybe faith isn’t found in getting to the right place. Maybe it’s trusting that if we belong somewhere else, the God who opens doors knows how to open them. And if He has seated us here, then there is something here worth receiving.

So I find myself worrying less about where I should be. The God who has carried me through every room before this one has never once misplaced me.

Not in the joyful seasons.

Not in the painful ones.

Not in the waiting rooms.

Not in the rooms I thought I had outgrown.

Every room has been part of the story. Every room has carried purpose. Every room has quietly shaped the person I am still becoming. And perhaps every room has really been asking the very same question all along.

Not whether I was capable.

Not whether I was qualified.

Not whether I understood.

But this—

Will you trust the Architect more than the architecture?

Because the rooms will change. Doors will open. Doors will close. Seasons will come and go. But the Architect has never once lost the blueprint. And if I can trust the One who designed every room, then I don’t have to be afraid of whichever one I find myself standing in next.

Every room.