Be Patient with the Journey
Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
Other Articles in:
Be patient. Healing is a journey that will look and feel different at every stage. Be patient with the journey. Be kind to yourself. Don’t compare yourself to others. Be gentle with your unique process of healing.
We live in an age of quick fixes, easy answers and instant gratification. Society’s prayer is, “God, grant me patience. Now!”
Wisdom is knowing healing takes a long time. There are no shortcuts. There is not 7 steps to wholeness.
Patience, gentleness and spaciousness are not the usual tools we keep in our spiritual toolkit. We are quick to judge ourselves if we are not getting the results we expect. Anne Sparrow wrote, “Do not be afraid to go slowly. Even the moon ( who carries time on silver shoulders ) knows she cannot be made whole in one minute.”
The path of healing – mind/body/spirit – is challenging enough without the unrealistic expectations that it should happen at a certain pace and in a certain way or you are doing it wrong.
We are all on the path of healing. Give yourself permission to be where you are today and not where you think you should be.
I love these words by Teilhard de Chardin, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would 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 long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”