“And you know what I realize now? That we’re all waiting on something, no matter where we are in life. It’s the human condition.”
– Melanie Shankle
Growing up, I would always stand at the front door patiently waiting for my grandparents when I knew they were coming over. Whenever I’d see a set of headlights turning the corner at the top of our hill, I found myself excited over the possibility that it was them. I did this ritual so often that I could identify their car by the shape of their illuminated headlights, and the fact that my grandfather was leisurely driving down our one-lane street at 15 miles per hour.
It might sound silly, but when they finally pulled into our driveway I felt the anxiety of waiting completely disappear and a sense of peace and comfort enter into my body.
Fast forward some 30 years and I feel like I’m still standing at the front door waiting for something. Maybe I’m waiting for my wife to come home from work; waiting for responses from emails or text messages; waiting for a house and a job and a host of other things that truly make me realize how much of our lives we spend, well, waiting!
As Shankle says above, waiting is just another part of “the human condition”. However, that doesn’t make it any easier on those of us who wait anxiously rather than calmly. But I’m beginning to see, as Joyce Meyer once said, “Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” And if life SHOULD have taught me anything by now, growing anxious over an uncertain future has little to no effect on the final resolve.
In short, the waiting game stinks and often sends many of us into a state of limbo that’s not a happy place to be for any extended period of time. But as Craig Bruce once remarked, “You usually have to wait for that which is worth waiting for.” Settling should never be an option.
