Learning to Wait

Learning to wait can be difficult, especially when it is for something we feel we desperately want or need. In our modern, high-tech world, we have learned to be impatient, to expect things immediately. When we are told we have to wait an hour to be seated at a restaurant, or we cannot have a package by next-day mail, we complain, we go elsewhere for service.

 

But sometimes the things we most want and need cannot be achieved so quickly. We probably began recovery looking for a “quick fix” to our relationship, marriage, our boyfriend’s addiction, or whatever problem we had. We find the situation that is driving us crazy does not resolve itself overnight. We don’t know what to do. We can make healthy choices for ourselves, but even after we do so, we may find we are not fulfilled, not happy, not in the place we want to be. The only thing we can then do is wait.

 

Waiting is not easy, but sometimes it is the most effective way to heal a situation. Take a broken relationship for example. The boyfriend and girlfriend break up. The girlfriend wants to get back together. She keeps trying until she only drives him farther away from her. She is convinced they are still meant to be together, but she just has to wait. Perhaps he needs to get a grip on his drinking problem and once he does he will realize he is meant to be with her and they will live happily ever after.

 

Sometimes we start waiting with such fantasies. It’s possible, but not likely this will happen. More likely, in time the girlfriend will realize they were not meant to be together. She will learn she can find another relationship, a better, healthier one. Perhaps she will see or hear about the ex-boyfriend and realize his journey is progressing toward healing, but also progressing in a direction different than her own. One day, while she may always care about the boyfriend, she wakes up and realizes the pain is gone and she is free to live her life again. Perhaps someone or something special comes into her life, and she realizes she would not have been ready for it had she not gone through the earlier experience. The waiting was worthwhile.

 

Waiting is not easy, especially when we focus on the future and how long the waiting may take. We need to focus on living day to day. Perhaps what we want is six months away. We don’t think we can wait that long, but we wait an hour or two, and then we tell ourselves, “If I could get through this morning, I can get through this afternoon and evening. If I got through today, I can get through tomorrow. If I got through this week, I can get through next week” and so on. Soon time will have gone by faster than we could have imagined, and we find that we were living while we were waiting. When we look back, what seemed so important at that time is not so important now. Why? Because learning to wait heals, and waiting puts life in perspective.

Irene Watson, MA,  is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.

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