Over the summer, one of my cats got out of the house.

Of course, it wasn't Manny, the placid, hang-out-with-people, come-when-he's-called cat. Instead, it was Wyatt, the goes-wildly-insane-when-out-of-the-house cat. When I realized he was outside, I called my dad and we attempted to catch him. As we herded him toward a door, he panicked and dashed up the stairs onto my deck, hopped up onto the lower roof, and scooted in under the solar panels.

I crawled up onto the roof and lay down by the edge of the panels, peeking under with one eye. I could just make him out: crouched, panting, wide-eyed, refusing to budge.

I called to him. I offered him treats. I opened a can of tuna and slid it as far under the panels as I could reach. But the little cat was too scared to be interested in food or budging an inch. The sun went down and it began to rain.

Though he was sheltered from the direct rain, the water was running down under the panels. The roof was becoming slippery, so I climbed back down onto the deck. And waited.

As I sat in a comfy chair, wrapped in a blanket, dry under my new hardtop gazebo, I pestered God and waited impatiently. I thought about how in a book it might simply say, "She waited for him to come down for 12 hours, terrified that he never would." But that wouldn't even begin to touch on the agony and unendingness of the wait.

However, it did help to know that I would get through it – whether Wyatt lived or not, I would get through it. I prayed desperately that he would live. That he would crawl out from under the panel and into my waiting arms.

Waiting is hard and not being able to do something when someone you love is hurting is a heavy, heart-aching, burdensome feeling. A feeling Jesus understands, because His heart aches for ours and with ours as He watches us make choices that might be as foolish as hiding under a solar panel in the rain when we could be eating tuna and curling up in a comfy cat bed.

How many times have I made my life more difficult because I just didn't trust Him? Because I wanted to do things my own way? Because I didn't want to wait? And every time, He waits patiently on the deck for me to return.

Well, sometimes He doesn't wait – sometimes I need a little active prodding. Like Wyatt.

When the sun came up the next morning, my dad and I both crawled up onto the roof, on either side of the solar panels. My dad had a long pole that he carefully slid under the panels and used to gently poked Wyatt. As he pushed, Wyatt slowly inched away from the pole until his hind end was out from under the panels. I grabbed him, hugged him tightly, then popped him in open window and slammed it shut.

Update: Wyatt suffered no lasting harm – he was back to normal and fully recovered after a snack and a nap, though for a few weeks he avoided getting too close to any of the outside doors.