​The Art of Waiting

There is a time for everything.  And timing is everything. Some say things happen according to God’s timing. But I’m convinced it is God who is waiting on us.

"Everything has its own time, and there is a specific time for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pull out what was planted,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up,
a time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to hug and a time to stop hugging,
a time to start looking and a time to stop looking, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear apart and a time to sew together, a time to keep quiet and a time to speak out,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."
 
That is from the bible (Ecclesiastes) but you might know it best paraphrased in a really great song by the Byrds…

I have come to understand that in between the loving and the hating, the keeping and the throwing away; the killing and the healing there is a space, a place in time as well; when one season in our life is over and the next has yet to fully present itself.

 It’s the space I call the middle– and no one likes to talk much about it. It is the place where we don’t know and that can be terrifying.

This uncertainty is a bullhorn on the message of how very little control we actually have over our own lives.  If you are courageous, it is the place where you grow, the place where you learn. Brene’ Brown says this is where the magic happens - because it does. But the middle is hard and most of us are afraid - we are very afraid.  So, we don’t wait, we push through and as a result, we don’t learn, we don’t grow and then we repeat our sameness all over again in a different  situation.

Waiting leaves us vulnerable, hoping for things that might never materialize forcing us to learn to be comfortable when outcomes are not guaranteed. I find it agonizing.  I’m a strategic thinker, I move quickly, I make things happen.  At my core, I really can’t fathom why the hell you’d ever want to wait for anything.  But I have hurt myself, I have hurt others in my inability to wait. I have missed opportunities because my timing wasn’t right. I would enter too early, I would leave too soon. Months or years would go by and I would realize, I missed out because I was too afraid to sit in my discomfort and wait. I was too afraid to grow, I was too afraid to change. Or maybe I was too ignorant to know that I didn’t know.

If you don’t wait, take the time to processes what you’ve just torn down, what you build again will not be as good, I think.

I am learning, there is an art to waiting and a beauty that is created when we learn to press into the discomfort and let go of the outcome. Let go of our need to control. In several areas of my life, it is my time to wait. To sit, to be still, to know that the universe and everything in it are working at its own pace and in its own time - with my greater good in mind  - and this is something I can’t control.  I am learning. It is hard, but I think it will be worth it.