I’m not really a searcher. For the most part, I’ve always been happy with what I have. True, I am always striving for more opportunity and adventure, but I don’t let the lack of whatever that “more” might be keep me from enjoying what I already have.
Part of this balance is just personality. Part is organizing my life in a way that I have what I need. Friendship, love, purpose, creativity: I have had the luxury of making those things a priority in my life. I have a good life, and I have a temperament that allows me to recognize its goodness.
That’s why the last few months have been such a shock to my system. I have been in a season of impatience, sickness, uncertainty, waiting. Everyday I’m waiting for something: waiting for pain to pass, for the weekend to get here so I can see my sweetie, for contracts to come out, to hear back about an audition, for spring, then for summer.
Through this all I have let one of my least favorite qualities creep into my personality – putting off happiness. I have started to imagine that there is always something else that needs to happen before I can be satisfied. But I know that I can be satisfied. I have enough. I have more than I deserve. I have more than I could ask for. And when I get even more, or when things change, that will still be enough for me, and I can still be happy.
I pray I can accept the eternal “now”, allow myself to be subsumed in it and emerge rejoicing.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
— that is to say, grace –
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
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