I've been feeling stuck lately. I haven't progressed in things that I've wanted to move past from, I haven't reached any goals I've set, and I haven't felt my best in a long time.
I've been searching for signs. Anything, really. Quotes from Pinterest, texts from friends, any sign from God that shows that I'm moving in the right direction. Nothing was showing up.
I waited. I've been waiting and waiting impatiently for signs to move on. To reach those goals. To feel happy again.
To find the answers I've been searching for, I've been praying all the time, listening to worship songs to get me through the days, talking to friends about my feelings, and reading books. One book that I absolutely love and I'm in the process of reading is "Come Matter Here" by Hannah Brencher (somebody I look up to tremendously). I try to read a chapter a night but in this process, I've been slacking. The past week, I've picked it up every night and read a chapter, no matter how I'm feeling.
The book talks about how Brencher has dealt with her anxiety and depression, which is right up my alley. "Come Matter Here" is very relatable to me, and reading it obviously helps me to make sense of my emotions.
These past couple of weeks, I didn't know where I was. WHO I was, really. I really lost myself. It was like I had been climbing this ladder of recovery and all of the sudden, my foot missed a rung and I tumbled down, all the way back to where I started, on the ground. I turned to the only place I could. My faith.
To be completely honest, my faith hadn't been my first priority. Being a freshman in college, there are so many different things being thrown at you that I had to put my faith to the side to deal with each thing. Now, this shouldn't be the case, but unfortunately, it was for me. I realized I had been doing this, and I couldn't stop until I was left with nothing. Now, after all that I had lost, faith was still chilling on my shelf, waiting for me to pick it up, dust it off, and begin again.
I was still confused about what season of life I was in. It's hard to explain, but to put it simply, I fooled myself into thinking I was in a different season of life than where I really was. That happens to all of us though. A fake curtain masking what really lies behind it.
So, as confused as I was, I started reading. And searching. I was full of hope and ready to move on from this confusing chapter of life. This purposeless chapter. I felt lost. So I kept searching. Searching for signs, for people, for anything to help. Suddenly, I entered the chapter in "Come Matter Here" that talked about the waiting. Suddenly, everywhere I turned, signs about waiting and being patient kept appearing. On my Pinterest, quotes about trusting the process and waiting kept popping up. I even started noticing signs outside about waiting. I even noticed the faint "Wait!" the crosswalk near UGA's dining hall blurts out on the speakers. All these things made me realize, I'm in a season of waiting.
A season of waiting could mean different things to different people. It could mean adjusting, it could mean a break or a pause, or it could actually mean, literally, waiting. For me, it was taking a break. I'm going from one season to another. I have to grit my teeth and wait. One fact about me, I am not patient. So this season is hard.
But I will wait. I will grow in the wait. I will praise in the wait. I will have faith in the wait.