What are You Waiting For?
Morgan Day Photography
All of us are waiting for something.
We are waiting to be asked to dance, or to have the courage to dance on our own. We are waiting to be chosen on a team, to get accepted into the school of our choice, or for an offer of employment that will take our career to the next level. We are waiting to fall in love or fall back in love. We are waiting for someone else to say they are sorry. We are waiting for wounds to heal and for the time to be right to move on. We are waiting for a trip to Italy, a vacation to the beach, a new yoga class to somehow revitalize a life that has grown stale. We are waiting to get pregnant or for our kids to start school so we can find some time for ourselves again. We are waiting to upgrade our phones, our car, our house. We are waiting to find the perfect church, the perfect guy, the perfect pair of running shoes so we can finally begin training for that marathon.
We are waiting for the diagnosis to come back in our favor. We are waiting for the sale of the house to close. We are waiting for our life to get in order so we can find the emotional space to forgive the people who’ve hurt us. We are waiting for the work in our backyard to be finished so we can start volunteering.
We are waiting for happiness. We are waiting for peace. We are waiting for a compelling reason to shift, or change, or start anew so we can begin heading toward a better life. Or maybe we are just waiting for something to make us feel alive again– something to give us back a spark of encouragement, excitement, or hope. All of us are waiting for something. All of us are somewhere on the way to where we want to be.
We are traveling a thousands paths at once– relational, financial, emotional, physical, spiritual. Each one of these paths has a here and a there and an indefinite number of mile markers along the way.
Where on the path between here and there are you?
Some of these paths we are journeying well. We are gaining momentum, we are advancing, we are seeing progress and fruits in our lives. We have finally got a handle on our spending and have slowly started climbing out of credit card debt. We’ve taken on odd jobs to earn some extra money and have stopped buying on impulse. We pack a lunch instead of ordering out. We restrict our Starbucks habit to one latte a week. We are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Financial freedom is in sight.
And on some other of our paths we have drifted into a rut. We stopped investing in ourselves, in our personal health and well-being. We make excuses for not having the time to workout or the money to take a class in something that interests us. We zone out in front of the t.v. before we fall asleep instead of writing notes in our journal about the book we want to write. Days and weeks pass and we are no further along on our journey.
On the paths where we are stalled out there is a sign flashing. And the sign reads: “What are you waiting for?” Anna Quindlen says in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, “It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes…It is so easy to exist instead of live.” What if the difference between existing and living– between wasting your life and making the most of it– is simply your willingness to ask and answer the question, “what are you waiting for?”
This month, take an inventory of all the paths you are traveling. Look at your relationships, look at your finances, look at your personal health and wellness and look at your big-dream goals. Look at your spiritual life. Be honest with yourself about the direction you see yourself heading on each one of these paths.
God has created you with the desire to keep advancing your life and to never stop growing. He’s also created you with the desire to know Him. Embrace these desires and set off on a fresh adventure to live a more fulfilling and purposeful life.
Every life, including yours, was designed with the possibility to be something amazing. In the areas of your life where you feel stuck, get someone to help you find where you’ve hit a barrier or drifted into a rut and make a decision to do something about it. If you still feel the gap between where you are and where you want to be, keep journeying forward. Refuse to simply exist, make a commitment to live, and ask yourself, what are you waiting for?
