Patience is a virtue that I have never mastered. Maybe this impatience is innate, caused by being the baby of the family, but when I want something, I want it now! I want it yesterday. Then the writer in me says, just make it happen. My fate is up to me. I am the author of my story, so write the dialog, write the emotions, breathe it all into life. In writing, I can make the characters to do exactly what I want. Life isn't like that, though. I know how storylines, character development, and plot points work. A story is over before it begins if our protagonist gets everything she wants in the first three paragraphs. It's pointless and boring. She character must struggle, face conflicts, and overcome it all to make it to the final chapter. The good one. The one you endured 365 pages for. The waiting builds dramatic tension, and tension is meatiest parts of the book. The pages you dog-ear and read over again and again. I need a slow burn, a building, not a bright burst that fades. I want embers that never go out, keeping me warm for the rest of my life.
So here I am, practicing patience, maybe for the first time ever. I'm not being demanding. I'm not forcing my hand. (I am internally screaming and stressing. I can only handle mastering one virtue at a time.) I'm waiting, and in the waiting, I am still. In the stillness, I can think. In the thinking, I can decide what is worth the wait and what is not. What belongs to me and what has no place in my life. If something makes it through the waiting phase, and the stillness, and the thinking, it is worth it. It was stronger than my restless mind.
I have never really believed in fate, at least until lately, but there are just some things that happen no matter how much I fight it, no matter how I wasn’t expecting it. I have learned that I have to allow a natural progression to things. I have to let life be organic. Because the things that you don’t expect are often the most beautiful, the most life-changing. Everything you’ve been waiting for. See. I'm waiting.
I can't control how long it will take, but I know it's coming. And I can control how I react. I can remind myself to stay calm, to find joy here in the Waiting Place. The happy ever after doesn't come in the first chapter but on the last page. So I'm willing to wait for it.
