DYM: Don’t forget where you are now
As Ferris Bueller reminded us on his day off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Whether you’re getting this reminder from our fictional friend Ferris or other pop culture icons, every adult you know has probably said it to you, and you’re likely starting to realize it for yourself — life moves faster than we realize.
Maybe it’s that I’m in my twenties, or perhaps it’s just the human condition, but I’m always looking to the next thing. I often forget to realize where I am in the moment, especially when I’m waiting for something else to begin.
If you read my last blog post, “You are not what you do,” then you know I’ve been in the search for a full-time, career job for a while now. You’ll also know from reading that post that I struggled through a season of depression.
Depression and anxiety have links to memory loss, and I have felt the impacts of that in my own life recently. I’ve forgotten a lot of things — events, simple memories from childhood and recent years, etc. — over the past year or so, and I only vaguely remember them after a friend or loved one has mentioned them. But, it occurred to me while I was driving home from work the other day that depression wasn’t the only cause of my forgetfulness. I’ve also been living the past couple years as if the here-and-now wasn’t worthy of my time and attention.
So, here’s a reminder to younger - and current - me, and maybe to all you lovely people out there, to live where you are.
It seems wherever we turn, society, friends, coworkers and anyone else you can think of dread waiting. We complain about waiting rooms, sitting at traffic lights, shipping that takes longer than two days, and a host of other things forcing us to wait longer than we want. We’re constantly anticipating the next thing and missing every moment between now and that other moment’s arrival.
However, is waiting really always such a bad thing?
In Ann Voskamp’s newest book Waymaker she writes,
“Waiting is letting go to let something grow. The waiting need not destroy the soul but grow the soul. Waiting is a kind of expecting — expecting to have the capacity for hope and pain and love and life to expand… Waiting isn’t loss; it’s enlarging. The longer the heart waits, the larger the heart expands to hold the largeness of a different way of life.”
In our waiting, we have an opportunity to appreciate where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we are potentially going.
When we make requests to God in our prayers, it’s normally because we’re waiting for and expecting something. I know that’s been true for me as I wait to hear back about different job opportunities. In addition to these requests, recently I’ve also been asking God to help me be content in the waiting, to appreciate where I’m at right now. I might be in between some of life’s milestones, but that doesn’t mean the steps from one milestone to the next aren’t worthy of recognition and celebration. After all, we couldn’t reach milestones without the steps we took to get there. Those seemingly smaller steps are actions of hope in waiting for what is to come.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:24-25:
“For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
In our waiting, we are hoping.
In our waiting, we have an opportunity to hope and grow and learn. My prayer for you and me is that we wouldn’t take for granted these times of waiting. I pray we wait with hope, patience and excitement to prepare ourselves for where we are now, so that we’ll be prepared for where the Lord is taking us. God is faithful and is with us in our waiting.