Patient Anticipation

There is so much waiting in anticipating.  It's part of the process, actually.  And I think there's so much to be learned when you really stop and think about it.

Hopeful anticipation for a conception.

Anxiously counting the weeks until the due date only to wait even longer until the cake is truly baked.

Enduring sleepless nights with trust that things really won't always be this way and you really will have rest again.

Helpfully guiding toward courage for those first steps.

Waiting for that first tooth to finally wriggle lose and come out, and wondering will it ever?

Counting down the days until Santa's anticipated arrival.

Wishing and hoping for that first real snow fall.

So. Much. Anticipation.  It all requires so much patience.

And then somewhere between First Grade and the rest of the years, life speeds on and you find yourself holding on and wondering: Are we really there?!


If we think about it for a moment, the reality settles upon us...

It takes so much for babies to be created and then born.  And it takes so much sometimes for a lifetime to be lived and then for life to surrender to death.  Sometimes it doesn't, though, and life seems cut short.

Yet, even when we think we're ready to say goodbye and we have given permission to our loved ones to receive peace and pass on, the anticipation seems grueling and we're still learning patience.

Patience.  One of the biggest lessons of life.  We won't learn it all from reading a book.  And we won't learn it all by the time we're 30 or even 31.  We won't learn it all from being a parent, either.  It's to be learned - a process to be experienced over time.