healing. takes. time.

Have you ever wondered to yourself about an area of your life, “Why is this taking so long to fix? When will it get better, when will I have the result I want?” It could be an injury or illness. It could be a difficult relationship or a situation in your life that is challenging you to improve. We all have these “areas” in our life that need healing, and often times we want a result before really doing the work. And, yet what I’ve come to find is that, any lasting change takes time. A lot of time. And, a tender balance of focus and of letting go. We all can visualize an outcome of how we would like something to turn out, but we often find that it’s not always how we visualize them, that things work out. There is usually deeper work to be done if we truly want to improve an outcome.

Healing. takes. time. And, yet our brain likes to play tricks on us. It likes to see results and so it puts this undeserving pressure on our life. “I want it now” has become our attitude. When my children are acting ungrateful I’m known to call them “Veruca Salt” from the original movie, Willy Wonka, and of course I recite the song “Don’t care how, I want it now!” They always seem to have some self-reflection that brings them back to a state of “getting it.” Of course, not before teasing me and giving me a hard time about calling them “Veruca.” Interestingly, Verruca is a medical term for wart, so it’s a double sting.

We all get impatient. We all want to see results. We all want to know our efforts are worth something. What we lack is patience. Patience is an art form. It is not an easy virtue to attain. It takes incredible faith to have patience because it is believing that part of the healing is in the waiting. It’s in the hidden moments of discovering a question being answered. Maybe a friend we connected with after a long time to help bring reflection or insight. All these little things take time.

Maybe instead of wanting results we can turn it around into gratitude that our Creator thinks we are worthy of the challenges we face. After all, we know that overcoming an obstacle in our life is incredibly rewarding. Maybe instead of being frustrated at not seeing change, we can turn it into patience, knowing that whatever challenge comes our way is for our greatest good. What if we realized that just maybe, our challenges choose us because of who we are to be when we overcome them?