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Rebel Talk: Forever Waiting
I hate waiting.
I like to move. I like progress. I like checking something off the list and moving on to the next thing.
And lately, it feels like all I’ve been doing is waiting. It's Sunday night, and I am waiting.
I’m still waiting for my house to start being built. Waiting on decisions. Waiting on schedules. Waiting on other people to do what they said they were going to do.
Waiting.
The funny thing is, I’m usually a pretty patient person.
I talk to my kids all the time about what I call persistent patience.
Because we live in a world where everybody wants everything right now.
We want success right now.
We want the house right now.
We want the business to work right now.
We want the answer right now.
We want to skip the uncomfortable middle and get straight to the part where everything finally comes together.
But most things worth having don’t work that way.
I know that because my own life hasn’t worked that way.
Almost everything I’m proud of today came from taking slow, methodical steps over a long period of time. Keep moving. Keep working. Keep making the next good decision.
Not always huge steps.
Sometimes barely noticeable ones.
But forward.
That’s persistent patience.
It isn’t sitting around hoping something happens.
It’s continuing to do your part while accepting that you don’t control the timeline.
And apparently, I need to hear my own advice right now.
Because this fall hasn’t been what I wanted it to be.
Fall is my favorite time of year.
There are usually cabin trips. Camping trips. Cool mornings. Fires at night. Getting away with my girlfriend and doing some of the things we’ve done together every fall.
This year, life has gotten in the way.
And I don’t like it.
There are only so many fall weekends. You can’t move October into December because you were too busy.
That part has been bothering me more than I probably want to admit.
Because sometimes while we’re waiting for the next thing to happen, we can become so focused on what hasn’t happened yet that we miss what is happening right now.
That’s the part I’m trying to remind myself of.
The house will eventually get built.
The decisions will eventually get made.
The things I’m waiting on will eventually move.
And some of them probably won’t happen exactly when or how I want them to.
That’s life.
But I also don’t want to spend an entire season frustrated because life didn’t follow the schedule I had planned for it.
Maybe persistent patience isn’t only about having the discipline to wait for something you want.
Maybe it’s also about having the discipline to keep living while you wait.
To stop staring so hard at what’s coming that you forget to appreciate what’s already here.
I’ve spent a lot of years building things.
Businesses. Relationships. Experiences. A life for my kids and myself.
None of it happened overnight.
And I wouldn’t appreciate most of it nearly as much if it had.
So maybe this is just another one of those stretches.
Another reminder that progress doesn’t always happen on my schedule.
Another lesson in persistent patience.
I still hate waiting.
I probably always will.
But I’ve learned enough by now to know something else, too.
Keep showing up.
Keep taking the next step.
Keep doing what you can control.
And while you’re waiting for whatever comes next, don’t forget to live the life that’s happening right now.
Because someday, you might realize these were the days you were waiting for.
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