I Don't Wait Anymore {+ a Giveaway!}

First of all, let me tell you it is not Saturday! If you're a regular here, you're accustomed to seeing my thoughts on the books I've read as part of the Saturday 6, but I'm coming at you with book news a day early this week, so I wanted you to be sure to know it is NOT SATURDAY!!! GO TO WORK!

Source

Several weeks ago, I signed up to read Grace Thornton's new book I Don't Wait Anymore. Thanks to another fabulous delivery debacle tied to our recent move {remember this one???} the book didn't make it to me, but Zondervan was kind enough to try a second time, and I just got the book earlier this week. Because I'm up against a time crunch to tell you about this, I did not get to sit and savor every page like I dearly wanted to, but that's okay; I'll just read it again!

Because this, my friends, is a sit-and-savor book. Grace and I are, in some ways, long lost twin sisters. I have a feeling we are practically the same age, we both grew up with crazy end-times fears, we both longed for love, we both deeply resisted winter driving on the interstate, and we both wrestled over how to live the story God had written for us, even if His plot didn't match the ones we designed for ourselves. Yes, we could certainly be twinsies.

Grace has one up on me, though, when it comes to adventure. She's been more of a world traveler than I will ever be, and that is absolutely okay, because that's part of her story in ways I doubt it will ever be part of mine. Yet both our stories are uniquely lovely.

I Don't Wait Anymore is Grace's story {and the tender urging of her heart toward the hearts of all her readers} of giving up the wait for life to turn out as expected and to instead believe that God could have so much more beauty wrapped up in plots we couldn't even dream up for ourselves. And not even to believe that truth, but to embrace it and to let it embrace back.

Because so much of Grace's waiting and longing centered around a love story and a husband, I so identified with her heart-wrestling. Her thoughts and prayers absolutely mirrored many of my own from the pre-Ryan days. She asked questions of God like, "How do I get to the point where You are really all I need?" Yes. And she learned truths like "God should be the prize of marriage rather than marriage the prize we get from God." Yes.

Our stories have diverged, Grace's and mine. For reasons I don't know because I'm not the Author of stories, God wrote a leading man into mine and hasn't into hers. At least not yet. But just because that detail has changed doesn't mean that I don't need the reminder that I should not settle.

This is the crux of what she urges in the book. The whole of our lives, the everyday of our lives, should always be about whatever God has planned. That might mean taking in a foster kid or quitting a job or moving to another country or being okay without a husband. God's plan is never settling, and ours quite often might be, unfortunately.

I remember when I quit my job in radio and I wondered sometimes if I was settling. Had I just given up because the commute was hard and the hours were long? Maybe for some people that would have been true. But in that moment, I chose not to wait anymore. For months I had known that staying {for me} was settling, and I kept waiting out one more event, one more show, one more opportunity, and I finally  had to understand that no. God had called me to an adventure of being a wife and a writer.

I remember when I lost the love that broke my heart and I vehemently declared if I couldn't marry him, I would never marry anyone else because he was God's best choice for me, and I didn't want second best. And God had to talk me down and help me see that refusing another love was settling, and embracing the redemption story He offered me by opening my heart to Ryan was the greatest adventure.

I remember when we were trying to sell our house {for five years} and I kept praying that God would bring the right buyer...the one who would treasure the story of the house and continue its legacy. I remember wanting to cut my own tongue out of my mouth for praying such prayers. Why couldn't I just say SEND ANYONE! I WANT OUT! But I didn't settle. I prayed that house through to the most perfect buyer it could have had.

Never settle.

Don't sit and wait for your version of the right way to show up. Jump in and let God's grand story take place in your days. His grand story, by the way, might not be huge and magnificent in the way we've been taught to view "grand story." It might be something tiny and obscure to those around. But my goodness. In the light of eternity, it is grand.

This book is loaded with snippets of story, well-crafted phrases, and so many things that made me think. That's why it was hard for me to read it so quickly. It's written in such a way that I can't rush. I must think about her experiences and how they relate to my own. Even now, as Ryan and I look to the next part of our future, in a new town, we wonder what God has for us. And this book reminded me not to settle for quick answers made up in our own minds. To stop waiting for what we expect/need to happen to take place and to, instead, let go of all our own ideas and let God give us His grand adventure.

I can't wait to read it again. Slowly, this time, sipping the words and finding even more of their flavor.

Thanks, Zondervan, for providing a copy of this book for me in exchange for a review, and thank you for providing a giveaway copy as well! Want to check out the first chapter to see if you might like to read this book too? It's free, here!

GIVEAWAY!
And...a little bonus today! :) Zondervan will send a copy to one of you! Giveaway time! :) Leave a comment with something you are {or have been in the past} tempted to settle for, and I'll put your name in the drawing!

FINE PRINT:
* Since the publisher is sending this book out directly, entries are limited to US addresses only.
* If you don't have a login and your comments show up as "anonymous" - tell me enough info so I can get the book to you! Your name, and if I don't know you in real life to be able to contact you, leave me something that would allow me to reach out to you if you win!
* I'll leave the drawing open until 11 p.m. ET on Saturday, June 4th.  

{Appropriate verse to tie to Grace's book!}