Waiting: The Most Difficult Challenge of All

I always said if I ever write a book about the cancer experience I will title it “Wait”. You wait for reports, you wait for your doctor, you wait for your next checkup, you wait for your next pain or nausea medication. Time isn’t about moving forward it’s about waiting while you are apparently moving nowhere. 

Many moments in life are like this. You wait until you have enough money for your dream. You wait until your debt is paid off. You wait for retirement. You wait for tomorrow or the weekend.

During a transforming transition there is a period of waiting often-called fallow time. The farmer has to let his crop rest while it restores it’s nutrients for the next crop. The ground lays fallow and doesn’t produce in the same way. During transitions, after letting go, there is “fallow time” or waiting. Not a lot to do. However, a lot is being done. From a spiritual perspective it is the pause before the action where everything is forming but nothing is visible. 

Much of my life I have lived at a very driven pace. This period of waiting was merely skipped over as I overlapped one area of my life with another, with another, with another. Why pause where there was no production? However, I have come to understand the value of that pause, fallow time, waiting. There is a lot going on energetically getting ready for our next chapter. 

So if you find yourself in one of those fallow times, just remember there is much happening at an invisible level both inside your energy and the energy around you that will contribute in powerful ways to the next chapter of your life. As I have finally learned – don’t waste these very helpful times in life where nothing seems to be happening. Trust these moments or stretches of time, relax into them and simply listen to any wisdom that you hear.