Waiting*

Am I waiting or am I stuck? 

I didn’t want to ask myself this question, much less listen and accept the answer. I knew the answer even before I finally asked the question. Denial is present in even the most mature and enlightened life.

The answer – I’m waiting.

My preference – to be stuck.  

In my thinking, stuck means there is an action I can take to become unstuck. I can put my nose to the grindstone, pull myself up by my bootstraps, I can just power through the problem. Why I would prefer to put my nose to a stone meant to literally grind things, or attempt the physically impossible of pulling myself upright by straps attached to my feet when the other alternative is to wait, may seem absurd. 

The truth is I’m not very good at waiting. If I’m waiting, that is my only job, to wait. I’ve somehow made waiting a synonym for wasting time. This has not and is not serving me very well. There are times in your life that you need to wait. Not just for small things but sometimes you need to wait for the big things too. 

Right now to reach my goal I’m being asked to wait. The reality is waiting is not a time of stagnation. Waiting is not wasted time. There is action in this waiting, the action of changing my mindset. Waiting is not the absence of action or the lack of labor it is the action of witnessing the labor of tending the presence of gentle guidance. A recent synchronicity brought this advice into my life “we have a choice now about how we wait- we can become impatient and begin to distract ourselves with whatever we can, or we can become the witness to the process”. @arcanabypamela

I’m bad at waiting because I’ve been doing it wrong. I get impatient while waiting. I distract myself.

It’s like I walked away from a plant I’ve been waiting to bloom only to come back and find that it is leaning desperately toward the window trying to get the light it needs to flourish. If I’d been witnessing, tending and guiding then I could have moved it so it could receive the nutrients it needed to bloom.

So I’m attempting to embrace the action of witnessing, the action of tending, the action of guiding. I can’t witness it if I’m distracted. I can’t guide if I’m impatient. Lasting change is a slow build and if I want to build something enduring then there no room for impatience or distractions. If I want my seedling to bloom it needs time, tending and guidance.

With Love,

Erin

*Original Post Date Aug 5th, 2020

Chani always knows exactly what I need to hear.