"While I wait, you strengthen my heart" Ps 27:14

I am not a super patient person when it comes to my life and the expectations of how I think it should look… now when it comes to my students in my classroom I am pretty sure I am the most patient person on planet earth haha… but when it comes to my life, my wants, my desires that is a whole different story. I was listening to a podcast the other day while I was at the gym and it made me really start to think about the times of waiting in my life, and there are a lot of them. I started to think about what I do in the waiting… the waiting for a different job, the waiting for a relationship, the waiting for a husband, the waiting for a family of my own, the waiting for a different financial situation, waiting for God to answer a prayer, the waiting for my business to grow and the list goes on. Waiting is a difficult place to be, it feels lonely at times, it feels like it is never going to end, and honestly a lot of times it feels really unfair. But I realized that my waiting typically looks like a lot of just doing nothing at all.

Like most people I want things to turn out the way I think they should go, I want things to happen instantly, for A + B to always = C, if you know what I mean hahaha. But my life doesn’t look anything like what I thought it would at the age of 34, it doesn’t even look close. In a lot of ways I think my life is so much more than what I imagined it would be.  But in a lot of other areas, like having a family of my own or owning my own house, my life doesn’t even come close to resemble what I thought it would look like. And on most days I am okay with that but this past week while listening to that podcast I was really challenged with what I am doing in the waiting. As a women the world silently tells us that life starts once you have a husband and a family, no one ever actually says that out loud but it is reinforced through culture, through the incessant questions about your dating life or of when you are going to have kids and on and on. I think I have had this subconscious thought that life would start once I got married and started having a family, that then I would set a budget to save for retirement, that then I would focus on buying a house, that then life would just sort of fall into place because that is literally what life has looked like for the majority of my friends and family.  But my life doesn’t look at all like that, it looks a whole lot different and that doesn’t mean that one way of life is right or wrong it's just different. And most days I am okay with that, and others I am just plain not okay with any of it…. But that is all part of it. As ridiculous as it sounds I want God to use my script for my life… I know full well that his plan is SO much greater for me but sometimes my head and my heart don’t always believe that.

Waiting is a hard place to be, waiting for things that you hope will happen one day really tests your perseverance and the value you place on yourself and your ability to wait for nothing but the best. There are so many lessons to be learned in the waiting, and learning to be patient and not force things to happen is a great lesson. But I was totally called out this past week, I cannot just sit around and wait for someone else to do things for me, for a situation to change before I feel like life can start to happen. I have ignored quite a few things in life because I was just waiting for things to change. But, you know what… I am the only one who can make the changes. I don’t have to wait on someone else or something else to start living life.

What are you doing in the waiting? Are you just wishing things would look different or are you doing something about it? Life doesn’t look the same for everyone but waiting for someone or something else to come in and make changes for you isn’t going to work. It's more likely that you are going to look back a year from now and wonder why you are still in the same spot. So quit waiting and go after that dream, take that trip, buy that house… because waiting for everything to be just perfect most likely will never happen. Although, culture says life “should” look a certain way I am making the choice to let go of the “shoulds” because waiting for me doesn’t mean sitting around doing nothing. It means taking action even when I am terrified, even when I don’t know if it will work out, even when it feels like I am going at it alone. Sweet friend, if you are stuck in the waiting I challenge you to start living even if it doesn't look like what you thought it would.