The Waiting Game

If we’re not careful, we will feel like we are always waiting….

We are waiting for the semester to end, for the salary to increase, for that friend or loved one to finally reach out to us again, for our waist to tuck in and the amount of JCrew clothes in our closet to suddenly and miraculously multiply!

Or, we are waiting to know where will spend the next five years of our lives going to graduate school…

The last one describes us…. And we need to be careful too. I've alternated through various potential locations in my head, daydreaming about where we will be living next fall. I've been trying not to get too attached to any one location with the stark truth that we do not have much influence over where we go. To say I'm impatient about it is...well, absolutely true!



I mean... come on, this is a big deal?! Yes?... well at least to me. Everyone has important things they hope for in their future.

Why is so much of life about purposeful waiting? Maybe it’s just part of reality that we always have the opportunity to achieve and become and experience increasingly beautiful seasons of development and triumph? Perhaps there is something in all of us that reaches forward into eternity with a divine discontentment, reaching for an understanding of our personal potential, for an assurance of our safe and happy every after.


But life is ever changing and ever surprising in ways that keep us reaching only one phase at a time; one move, one friend and one new opportunity at a time. I think that if I knew things too far ahead, a lot of the precious personal growth and consistently developed inner zen… (in addition to the SURPRISE of all those exciting phases!)… would be utterly lost. With absolute certainty, there are no conflicts or worries in the human heart. Thus, there is no weighing of the consequences, no pressure pushing us towards relying on those magnanimous, hard to understand ideas like hope and optimism.

So, again, why is so much of life about purposeful waiting? ….I think it is the only way to truly practice hope, the only way to ultimately rule out the impatient, anxious, insecurities of our imperfect and, yet, lovely lives.

Think how much room for happiness, creativity, energy and excitement could be let into our souls if we just shelved a few of our “waiting” items and left them to hope? What if we used that energy to work, to share, to create, to love and to be productive until those “waiting” items came to fruition?

Imagine that..

Imagine a world that waits… peacefully… for good things to come.