Do you have to wait to build a life you love?

Today I went to the Van Gogh Emerson Experience with my fellow Champagne Sunday girl. During our many conversations over this adventure the subject of WAITING became a prevalant theme – specifically, waiting for a big change you know is on the horizon but have no way to predict when it will finally occur. We all go through this at some point. And, then we go through it again. And again – for different reasons and seasons of life. We wait to get married, for a baby to come, to get accepted to school or get the dream job, etc. For me, this was the definition of divorce – waiting. Waiting. WAITING. It wasn’t the fun in line at Disney kind of waiting either – it was the kind that is full of heartache and ugly surprises around every corner as we disassembled a relationship that had been 25 years in the making.

Waiting is a recurring theme in life.

Well, it isn’t really about the waiting, though is it? There is a message in all the waiting, isn’t there?

The message is BE PATIENT.

What is waiting but patience? Patience with myself, with those I love, with God even.

I am not good at patience. Or, maybe I am getting better. I suppose that would depend on who you ask.

So, while I am being patient, waiting on a change, what do I do? Being patient does not mean being stagnant. It doesn’t mean I just sit and do nothing. I don’t JUST wait. I create the life I love with what I have, with where I am.

We do not have to wait to build a life we love.

Long before I filed for divorce I was forced to see this. I was married to an alcoholic and I knew things were not good and that they would not be good without humongous change in our lives. And I knew this change, whatever it might be, would not be easy or quick.

I remember the day I decided I was not going to remain frozen in grief at my situation. I took time to imagine the life I wanted. What could I achieve where I was with what I had? I got a full time teaching job. I began painting again. I reconnected with old friends. I began, slowly, creating a life I loved inside the waiting.

I know change is on my horizon now too, different kinds of changes. Seasons of life changes. For one, my children will all leave the nest sometime within this new year. I will have to navigate living alone for the first time ever, in all of my years, and I am not looking forward to it. I will need patience with myself through this change in life but I have been building a life I love for a while now, so the transition may not be as terrible as I imagine.

What will you do inside your waiting?

• Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly. Proverbs 14:29

• Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

• Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Romans 12:12.

• But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:25

• The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still. Exodus 14:14.