Tag: patience

The Slow Work of God

Tina Leave a comment

This blog is still alive. Hi.

I have some drafts waiting to be finished and posted, but as always, I find myself a bit unsure if I should share them. Like they’re still quite unfinished and the thoughts were all over the place.

(That, and I’m also working hard with releasing a new short story, and revising my next book. :) )

I’ve been restless lately, though. It could be I’m just having a bit of difficulty being grateful for what I have because it’s far easier to complain or resist. Sometimes I wake up with a lot of anxiety for my day and then I go through it wishing it’s over so I can go back to what I want to do.

But the Lord says, be patient. Be patient because He’s working. Be patient because He’s faithful. I admit that I’m not the most patient person in the world and sometimes waiting is painful (and boring) but right now it’s what He’s asking, and I’m trying my best to do just that.

So we’re talking about patience, and I ran into this today while reading Fr. James Martin, SJ’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything over breakfast. I needed to read this over and over, so I thought I’d share it on the blog, too – in case you need it, too. (Emphasis is mine, btw)

That, and I wanted to say that this blog is still alive. :)

Patient Trust
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ excerpted from Hearts on Fire

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.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it 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.
Don’t 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 of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within 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.

(source)

* Featured image by Monoar Rahman from Stocksnap.io

Wait.

Tina 3 Comments

Also known as: I ramble because I feel like I need to post here. And some Black Saturday thoughts.

You’d think I’d write more here now that we’ve settled into the new-old house and had our Internet set up and all that. Yeah, I thought so too. But alas, life has caught up with me and I find myself not having words to write here. I’ve been busy with work, reading and generally trying to stay healthy after a slew of allergies and asthma attacks got me in the past weeks.

I wish I could regale you with more words, really, but I’m caught in this weird funk. Strangely, I can write tons about the books I read, spout random bursts of emo-ness and even attempted to write some pieces of fiction. It’s not really lost — I’m just at a loss for words here.

So excuse me for that.

On another note, Holy Week 2011 was very interesting. It was quiet, hot, and it crept up to me with surprises that got me blubbering like a grateful and loved idiot in the middle of the night during Good Friday. It’s good, remembering the story of ALL stories, and remembering that I am not just a spectator but a part of that story. Interestingly enough, I think I found this year’s lesson for me on Black Saturday, the day in the Holy Week where really, nothing happens.

I’m not sure why it resonated with me…except maybe I can relate to the nothingness of Black Saturday. To the waiting. The holding of the breath. The wondering in what happens next. I must thank Matt Maher for his Holy Week reflections, especially video #6:

[youtube xnp60uQ3EAw]

To quote:

Imagine what that must have felt like…the combination of anxiety and excitement and fear…you know, the kind of hope where you like, “I don’t even want to hope this is real because I can’t even handle the let down if it’s not.” And so…I don’t know if there are areas in your life right now where you’re kind of sick of waiting and you’re trying to find easy solutions, or you’re trying to find quick ways around the waiting. But I want to encourage you today to wait. To let those moments sit. Like they do on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday…give yourself some space to wait, and to let God move. And I think you’ll be surprised at what He can do with a little bit of time.

That definitely made me think. Thoughts on waiting require more than one post, so I would spare you from that. Let’s just say that right now, I feel like I’m being asked to just…wait. I definitely have that feeling of “I don’t even want to hope this is real because I can’t even handle the let down if it’s not.” Believe me, I do. My defense mechanisms are starting to think of scenarios on how I’d handle that let down if it happens, and a part of me is wishing really, really hard for it to choose another way. I don’t know, really. Except for that — I’m being asked to wait. Let God move. Just like how He did on Black Saturday.

THIS.

So yeah, this may be some kind of holding pattern. So I will wait. As for what I’m waiting for…maybe I’ll share next time. Maybe.