How many occasions have we had to practice patience in the waiting? If you are like me, you find yourself doing a lot of waiting in life. Maybe you're an expectant mom waiting for the birth of a baby, a college grad waiting to hear on the dream job, a patient waiting for the doctor to call with results, a business owner waiting for the big deal, or a foster mom waiting for placement. Whatever your situation is, you find yourself.....waiting.

“If you are wholly perplexed and in straits, have patience, for patience is the key to joy.”―Rumi

n this waiting, we sometimes realize we have been forgetting. Forgetting to live. I don't want to get so busy waiting that I stop living. That everything gets put on hold so I can wait and wonder or worry. We have been worrying, or anxious, or even uncontainably excited. None the less, we have forgotten to live. It honestly brings out some bad habits of mine. I worry and I fret, I get snippy and snappy at my family. I am a bit of a control freak, so practicing this patience in the waiting is torture! I want to know things now, I want things to happen now! So I focus on the waiting.

It reminds me of a camera lens. There's something called shallow focus. In shallow focus one plane of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus. So, something up close is in focus, while the rest of the shot is blurry. We get so busy focusing on the up close thing, the thing we are waiting for, that we can't even see the rest of the picture. Life is not about just one thing, or event. It's about all the little things that make up our life. I forget that. I forget to look beyond that shallow focus and see everything else I have going on.

We are officially licensed as a Foster/Adoptive Home...and this is when the real waiting begins. Everyone is ready, the room is ready, our hearts are ready to welcome a child. Now, we just, wait. Every time my phone rings, my kids jump up, Toby asks who it is, my heart beats a little faster. Yet, we wait. The thing is, we already love whoever is coming our way. We are already 100% invested in their life and making them a part of our family. This is easily the hardest part of this process. There is no person we are waiting on to finish paperwork, there are no more trainings for us to finish. It is really just a matter of time and patience that I didn't know I had.

So, I'm going to practice expanding my focus. Doing something fun with my family or friends. Cleaning the house, ack, but it's gotten neglected. Writing or taking pictures. Making a short film about something FUN. Whatever we are waiting for in life, we can't just stop living, we have to keep going, keep living and hoping and praying. There is a perfect time for everything. A perfect time for that baby to be born, a perfect time for the answer to a job or test results from a doctor. I say all this, knowing that when I finish this, I will go back to checking my email, checking for a missed call or text. I am really bad at waiting. I wrote a verse on my chalkboard in my living room, so I can't miss it, and it helps me remember to have patience in this waiting.