“Timing is everything.”

I’ve heard this quoted so many times, I can’t even guess how many. Most of us hope the timing for whatever we happen to desire at the moment to be now. Most often, it is not.

There are desires of my heart that I’ve hoped for many years. Because they haven’t yet come to pass doesn’t mean they are wrong, and certainly doesn’t mean they are impossible. Timing is the issue, I think, as well as my motives.

How often do we see people obsessed with their hunger for a particular event in life to take place when we know they aren’t ready for it? Teens often want to be old enough to have a driver’s license and once they get it immediately think they are ready town their own car. People of all ages want love to come to them, but often they are too immature, self-absorbed, or haven’t recovered emotionally from their last broken relationship to make a new one work. Others press their way into a leadership position because of degrees or personal connections, but don’t have the leadership skills to do well in the new position.

Timing is everything. If the thing we desire comes too easily, it is not appreciated. If it comes too early, we may not have the life experience to appreciate it or manage it well. If it comes too late, we may have given up our ambition. The changing of the leaf color this year has been dramatically later than usual, but as we see this week, the delay did not mean that it wasn’t going to happen under the right conditions and in the right time.

Some prayers in my life have continued for decades. Of course, I want the outcome I desire to be provided as soon as possible. However, at this stage in my life, I recognize more than ever the importance of timing, God’s timing. When I pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,” that doesn’t make me a wimp or a fatalist. Some people hide behind God’s will for everything they get and everything they don’t get. They don’t want to acknowledge their own part and responsibility for decisions they’ve made at all. They fail to take into account that their personal motives for asking for a particular thing, their ability to care for and cherish the answer they seek, and the timing of getting the answer they want are all important parts of God’s plan for our lives.

I am especially thankful now for unanswered prayers that I prayed in the past, thinking that I absolutely knew the best answer and was ready for it. In retrospect, I can see that had I gotten the answer I wanted in the wrong time, it would have been disastrous. We all have a plan for our own lives, but even our very best plans are not as good as the plans God has for us. Our timing and God’s timing in our lives are not always the same.

Most of us, while we are daily living/writing the story of our lives, discover that somewhere along the way a different story will emerge than the one we tried to write. In my own life, there have certainly been twists and turns in my path that I did not anticipate. There have been tragedies and triumphs that I would never have thought to write into my story.

Life has taught me more than a few things about destiny and about asking God to direct my paths. It has also taught me to never give up on a good dream, but to take those dreams to the foot of the cross and offer them up to God. I can trust His answers. I can trust His timing. I can believe that there will be challenges in the future, but there will also be triumphs, surprises, and amazing adventures as I go. The fact that I don’t see them right at this moment doesn’t mean they are not there in the future, or even ahead of me today.

Timing is everything.

Reach longtime Enterprise columnist Judith Victoria Hensley at judith99@bellsouth.net or on Facebook. Check out her blog: One Step Beyond the Door.