Have patience, have patience
Don’t be in such a hurry.
When you get impatient
You only start to worry.
Remember, remember, that God is patient too.
Just think of all the times when others
Have to wait for you.
– sung by Herbert the Snail in Agapeland Music Machine’s “Fruits of the Spirit” CD, a song which made an appearance in my Sunday School days and for some reason, the one about Patience is the one that stuck.
"the time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things ... "
If good things come to those who wait, do bad things come to those who can’t wait?
Sometimes I wonder if my lack of patience and unwillingness to relinquish control in the important areas of my life has sabotaged an overflow of God’s blessings. I’ll be honest with you — I’m an impatient person from an impatient family. I want things done yesterday and I can’t stand not knowing how my life will turn out.
When we were kids, we were so impatient to open our Christmas presents that my parents would often let us open them weeks before Christmas. This yearly occurence made me come to two realizations: first of all, that Santa Clause didn’t exist because there would be no presents under the tree on Christmas morning; and secondly, that we’re an impatient family. Now that we’re grown up, we have more self-control and have even waited until Boxing Day to exchange gifts to accommodate everyone’s hectic schedules, but a little bit of that inability to wait has carried on into my adulthood.
It’s like I can see my future all wrapped up and pretty sitting under the tree, elaborately decorated with bows and ribbons and I can’t stop obsessively feeling it and shaking it to see what’s inside and what will become of me. Rather than let destiny unfold and trust that God knows what he’s doing, I want to rip the present open weeks before the appointed time. To carry the metaphor further, I want to be the one who picks the gift out for myself because I don’t trust God’s judgment.
When it comes to the phrase, “Let go and let God,” letting God is one thing, but letting go? Not so easy …
how soon is now?
Like Abraham in the Bible, I know the promises God has for me and know he has a plan for my life, but I’m not getting any younger. With my 25th birthday only a month away, I can’t help but throw my hands up in exasperation sometimes and wonder, “So where’s the writing career? Where’s the exciting job? What happened to this promise and that promise?” God’s timing can be as slow as molasses, and I wonder if I should be doing more letting go and trusting — which would be an excellent life lesson to curb my restless and impatient nature, or if I should be taking matters into my own hands — which would be an excellent life lesson to overcome by contradictory passive nature.
Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands and Abraham became a father to Ishmael, which wasn’t the plan but God made good come out of it anyway and still blessed them with their promised son Isaac. Perhaps God can shape my destiny despite my stubbornness and stupidity and insistence on immediacy. Maybe it’s not too late for me and my dreams which have lately seemed to lie dormant for fear of failure. Maybe all this waiting is meant to teach me to find the perfect balance between waiting and trusting and using the gifts God has given me, despite the risks. Maybe 25 isn’t the end of the world …
Maybe waiting until Christmas morning to unwrap my present will be worth it all.
Oh my goodness! So much of this is speaking to me right now! 1) I’ve been reading and studying and taking a course on the Old Testament, and IMPATIENCE is surprisingly a re-occuring theme that causes them to sin (they made the Golden Calf because they were impatient). 2) I studied Genesis intensely (especially the creation stories) and this whole idea of “the Knowledge of Good and Evil” is blowing my mind. What was the sin, disobedience? Sure. But it was first and foremost the fact that Eve thought she knew better than God, and she made an independent moral judgment. “Let go and let God” reminded me of that. We can say we let go, but do we believe God knows better than us in order to “let God”? The crazy thing about the Bible, I’m finding (and it’s true about life in general) is that God let’s US. But he doesn’t let go. He’s still in control, but he doesn’t give up on us, even though he’s given us the freedom to make choices for or against him.
Great blog. Thx.
Dang. This is super-relevant to my life right now . . . thank you for this.
It’s so encouraging to me that there are others out there going through the same things as me … even in the beautiful, faraway land of Seattle.
Check out this awesome poem I found whilst browsing some other blogs:
http://www.dtm.org/Poems/Wait.html
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If you wouldn’t mind a few practical tips, I have struggled with some of the same stuff, still do, and one thing I tell myself is that a PhD would take me at least 4 or 5 years of hard research and writing and might still not get me where I want to be, so I might as well write for 4 or 5 more years, hoping that it will eventually lead to the life I want. The other thing is that I could start a job next year (I’ll be thirty) and still work there for 35 years before retiring (meaning that I’m younger than I think, and life is longer). The last thing is that if you are a writer, everything you do and see is fodder: every crappy job, every boring situation. I used to live with a girl I couldn’t stand and I would just tell myself: oh, what a wonderful character she’ll make in a novel some day!