Photo by Ruben Hutabarat from Unsplash

In the journey of fulfilling your dreams, the entire process involves a lot of waiting. Most people fail to endure until the end not because they’re incapable but because they are impatient.

I, for one, am very guilty of this sentiment. I struggle with maintaining a positive attitude while waiting. Like most people, patience is not my strongest quality. Even if I start the day late, I want to make the most out of the rest of the day. I quickly make up a plan filled with a list of things I intend to accomplish within the day. It’s either doing school work, writing blog posts, or simply cleaning my room. Whatever it is I end up doing, I feel a lot better with myself when I do something productive and not just lie in bed all day. But if I’m being completely honest, this agitated urge to do something comes from the need for self-approval.

I am now approaching my third trimester, and amidst the extreme physical and emotional changes that come with pregnancy, I’ve never felt so useless in my life.

A few days ago, I was advised to withdraw from this semester because of my condition. Although deep inside I expected this to happen, still, some part of me hoped that I could still finish one whole semester before I give birth. I’ve planned out the remaining months for studying and finally finishing college, but all that’s ruined now. I’m probably going to graduate in 2024 now, but fingers crossed, I’m still aiming for 2023.

And now I have 4 months without school and am very pregnant. I’ve been on LinkedIn and many other job hunting sites and believe me when I say I’ve applied to A LOT of online jobs. But for some reason, all I get are 20% rejection letters, 10% initial interviews without a follow-up, and 70% no response from the HRs at all. All this waiting is what’s keeping me stressed.

I know I shouldn’t be worried about school when I have to give birth in a couple of months, but for some reason, I just think I’m not doing enough. It’s frustrating to find your plans get slowly ruined one by one. We may not want to admit it, but most times, it is our fault. Because we couldn’t wait long enough, we mistake our determination with desperation to control things.

Our anxieties leave us striving for things out of fear and not out of love for what we’re doing. When we don’t learn how to wait, it is easier for chaos to find a loophole and destroy all the work we’ve built. Impatience leads to a loss of focus and concentration.

One day you wake up and find yourself back at square one. Life forces you to forget all you’ve learned so that you can learn something new. You don’t get to choose which to forego, you just have to let go. And when this happens, you can either cast your worries to God or take matters into your hands and allow anxiety to control you.

WHY DO WE HAVE TO WAIT?

To reevaluate our decisions

While waiting, we get to ask ourselves the important questions. We have ample time to confront our fears, reflect on our true motives, and rethink our plans. Waiting gives us a clear purview of our priorities; whether they are feasible or practical now or sometime in the future. The act of waiting tests not only our patience but our motives. It brings out our true intentions about why we do the things we do. When the going gets tough and we’re left assessing our limited options, the truth comes out. Our intentions reveal themselves, and then we can truthfully identify which among our goals are what we really desire and which are only there for our egos.

To learn the virtue of patience

When we wait, we dig deeper into the difficulties of commitment. We understand that making sacrifices is non-negotiable and that there is no guarantee of how much and how often we have to give up something that’s important to us, for the sake of our dreams. For most people who don’t have what it takes to make it through, they give up early in the journey because they’re not willing to fail and face disappointment. Usually, they’re only interested in attaining short-term gains or success. Waiting allows us to trust in the process of things even if our perspective is limited and narrow. It urges us to be patient and wise, in both small and big things. Waiting reminds us that we are not in charge, that we are dependent on a higher power.

To anticipate a more meaningful success

I agree with the line, “Waiting builds anticipation.” When we wait, there is a part of us that expects an answer or yearns for something to happen exactly the way we want it to pan out. When we wait, we anticipate a good outcome and we hope for the best. We discipline ourselves by resisting the impulse to take an easy and available reward and choose to obtain a more valuable, more meaningful prize at a later period. It’s called delayed gratification.

Some people don’t take waiting so lightly, in fact, they hate having to wait. They hate having to deal with the anxiety of waiting for nothing or worse, waiting for something very far from what we are expecting. We may not always understand why we have to wait or how long we have to, but at least God promises to us that we wouldn’t ever have to do it alone. We tend to appreciate things the longer we have to wait for them. We tend to be more grateful for ourselves when we’ve experienced the hardships of maintaining calm amidst the probability of failure and regret. We tend to find the wait and the climb to be more special because we have to wait so long. We tend to cherish and treasure the things we wait for more than what easily comes to us.

To save us from trouble

Sometimes, the best move forward is to simply wait. Waiting keeps you grounded and makes you ready for what’s coming to you. It may be easy to think that waiting does more harm than good, but it’s actually the opposite. We are more likely to save ourselves from trouble and setback when we wait. We become smarter and more responsible with how we strategize our next move when our minds are clear. How many times have you put yourself in a difficult situation because you couldn’t wait for the right time? How many times have you hurt others because you couldn’t wait to come up with the right decision? How many times have your plans failed because you couldn’t wait until you are capable of fulfilling them? Your regrets of rushing decisions put you at a crossroads and paralyze you in every stage of your life. The fear of having regrets is what’s keeping us stuck in a pit because we always want to act hastily.

6 BENEFITS OF WAITING:

1. Waiting keeps us closer to God.

2. Waiting strengthens our fortitude.

3. Waiting transforms our character for the better.

4. Waiting makes us happier with our choices.

5. Waiting builds trust and dependency on God.

6. Waiting gives us peace amidst uncertainty.

CONCLUSION:

Waiting is tiresome and frustrating. So many thoughts come to mind when you don’t know what to expect. It is never easy, but it is necessary. Uncertain times are always present. They are there to test our patience and perseverance to keep going, and without these difficulties, we have no way of measuring our strengths. Our dreams do not come true once we believe or manifest them to come alive.

When we wait, we wait for God’s intercession. We trust in His perfect timing and do not demand Him to fit His plans according to ours. When we wait, we accept the unpredictability of life— how tables can turn in a blink of an eye, when you least expect it. We fully surrender our cares and worries to God, because He is the creator and designer of our fate. He knows a lot more than we do, so who else must we trust? Despite the plethora of adversities He plants, we must not be discouraged right away. We must hold His hand and allow Him to guide us through the woods no matter what is lost or taken from us after we’ve made it out.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

Joseph Campbell