Refuse To Settle

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. - Lamentations 3:25

Around the time I turned 14 years old, I decided that I wanted to buy a Ford Mustang for my very first car, and after seeing several Mustangs for sale online within my price range, I figured the possibility of getting one of these cars once I turned 16 was highly likely. However, my parents weren’t as optimistic. Every time I would show them a Mustang I’d found online, they would say things like:

“Kristen, this car has 180,000 miles on it.”

“You’re only going to get 13 miles per gallon.”

“Do you realize how much the insurance will cost for a 16-year-old with a sports car?”

“This one is 10 years old, so it's going to need a lot of repairs.”

At the age of 14, I didn’t understand why any of this was make or break. All I knew was that I found a Mustang that was under my price point. Thankfully, my parents had enough wisdom to anticipate all of the issues and extra costs I would face if I settled for a less-than-ideal car just because it looked cool and had a horse on the front of it.

Two years later I ended up buying a 2005 off-white PT Cruiser. Yes, you heard me…a PT Cruiser, also known as the car that every 80-year-old American citizen drives. Sure it wasn’t a Mustang, but it got me through the rest of high school and all of college with very few hiccups.

Now fast forward eight years later, and I still had my eyes peeled for a Mustang. Knowing this, my mom called me one day and said a friend of a friend was selling his Mustang, and she wanted to know if was interested. I practically screamed on the phone, which she took as a yes.

Two days later I showed up to look at this car, and my jaw was on the floor. The car was barely three years old. It only had 19,000 miles on it. It got surprisingly good gas mileage for a sports car. There were heated and cooled leather seats. The sound system was amazing. And to top it all off, it was under my budget! Not only was this car everything I was looking for. It was so much more.

I ended up buying the car a week later, and what made that purchase so special was the fact that I’d waited 10 years for it. Sure, I technically could have bought a Mustang when I turned 16. But what I waited for ended up being so much better than what I could have settled for.

I know this story is just about a car, and waiting for a car is very different than waiting for a job or a relationship or some other monumental part of life. But when we see waiting pay off in the little things, it becomes easier to wait for the bigger things. Now every time I find myself in the midst of waiting, I think about how much more driving my Mustang means to me now because of how long I had to wait for it. And I think about what I would have missed out on if I had settled 10 years earlier.

I know settling might seem like a good idea when you’re tired of waiting, but it’s never worth it. Don’t put up with the good just because you don’t want to wait for the great.

Whatever you’re waiting on today, I hope you take this season of waiting to draw near to your Heavenly Father. I pray you remember there is purpose in your waiting, and that five, ten, or even thirty years from now, you’ll be so glad you didn’t settle.