More basic than patience or perseverance are humility and hope.
– Ben Patterson, Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent

When I talk honestly with other wives about their marriages, a struggle something like this often emerges: they see things about their husbands they wish could change, not so much for their own selfish reasons (though that exists and must be sorted out), but, they feel, for their husband’s good. Maybe they wish their husband could lose weight, or mature spiritually, or grow in emotional vulnerability or leadership. But despite all they may do to point out or encourage that change, it doesn’t happen. How do they face this without growing disillusioned? How do they let go of trying to achieve the change, but still care? How do they hope, without expectation?

When people don’t change the way you hope, the natural response is to grow increasingly hurt, cynical, or withdrawn. It’s easy to take disappointments personally, and eventually to stop caring or having expectations. But I don’t think that’s the answer. We are called to love the people and world around us, and part of loving is seeing and desiring what could be better—to lose that is to love less. The answer lies not in deadening ourselves to our desires, but in considering what it means to wait well.

To wait—to admit the desire, yet not see the result—is much of the spiritual life. We are waiting for a kind of life, a kind of husband or child or friend or world, because we were created for it—and the more we know and love someone, the more we feel the disparity between the reality we see and the vision we hope for. We feel it most acutely in our closest relationships, in our marriages and our children. But we feel this for our world, the more we know and see its brokenness. We feel this for our friends, the more we know and love them. We feel this for ourselves, the more we know and see our true selves. And in the face of all this, we wait. How do we wait well?

Henri Nouwen writes about the spirituality of waiting, and in one place he says this: “I have found it very important in my own life, to let go of my wishes and start hoping.” Wish less, hope more. What does that mean? Nouwen writes: “Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.”

Here is, I think, the crux of the matter. What we wish for is what we want. What we hope for is what God promises. The two may overlap, but they are not the same. What we want is centered on ourselves, and focused primarily on a circumstance or outcome. What God promises is centered on God himself, and dependent on our understanding of his nature, character and glory. 

What I may want is for my husband to change in a certain way by a certain time, but what God promises is to work towards both his and my eternal good in His time in whatever way it takes. That may mean uncovering deep issues that take years to work through. That may mean changing my own heart and challenging my own desires as much as my husband’s. That may mean more vulnerability or suffering than I am comfortable with.

Ultimately, while wishing is based on a circumstance, hope is based on the person of God. Psalm 42 says, “Put your hope in God”—not in my husband or myself, or in the situation, but in God. My ability to hope without disappointment is entirely a function of my knowledge of and relationship with the person of Jesus. The more I know God and trust him, the more I am able to examine my expectations with humility and wisdom. The more I am able to commit the way and timing of events to Him. The more I am able to believe in His loving those I love more than I do myself. The more I am able to nag less and pray more.

This kind of hope allows me to wait, not with detached cynicism, or with blind optimism, but with faith. It allows me to wait as an act of belief in the person and workings of a powerful, sovereign, and loving God, who is intimately concerned with the affairs of my life and my world. It allows me to wait with active attention to the present. It allows me, in the waiting, to be myself transformed. It allows me to identify with and share in the longsuffering of Christ. It builds in me a greater anticipation for the heavenly Jerusalem in which all my longings will be met one day. Waiting is the great revealer, the great refiner, if I let it be. There is probably nothing that reveals more what I wish for, and what I hope in.