Patience and Reward
Can you wait for your prize?
There’s a cute little park across from where I live, adjacent to the beach. We take our dog on walks there. This past weekend, I noticed the grass along the narrow pass had quickly grown a couple of feet since I last saw it. The trees were suddenly full of green leaves. It seemed to have happened overnight.
It felt a little like when I don’t see my daughter for a week and she’s grown like a weed. When you don’t see someone every day, you can marvel at the change when you look at them again. It’s a great reminder that time doesn’t stand still.
The seasons have suddenly changed. In New York, we went from windy and fifty degrees to sunny and in the eighties. From one day to the next, it can feel like a different city. You don’t mind the traffic and the noise as much. It’s amazing what a little warmth will do for your soul.
The Impatient Gardener
I’ve planted many seeds over the last few years, and I’m still waiting for most to grow. Of course, I look every day to see their progress, staring at the soil and anticipating the sprouting of a bulb. It’s frustrating.
If I could plant and walk away, not look at the dirt for a week or two, I might come back and see a full garden. It would be a pleasant surprise.
Instead, I want to reach in and pull the flowers up from under the ground. I’ve waited so long. There must be something I can do to expedite the process.
But there isn’t. The seeds I drop need water, sun, and time. No matter how rich the soil or how perfect the conditions, without patience, there is no bounty.
With goals, you don’t know exactly how long they will take to blossom. Some things may happen immediately, while others will seem to languish, destined never to be realized. Thinking about those too much will keep you from planting any more.
Being discouraged from cultivating your garden is a mistake. Just because the greenery in one corner of the field hasn’t grown doesn’t mean the rest won’t. Those who lag may need a little more tender love and care. Still, new seeds need to be planted all the time so that there is always something growing. Always something new to be born.
Without gardening, life becomes stale. It begins to resemble death. It rots from exposure to the elements. There is never anything new coming into existence.
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. — 1 Corinthians 3:6-7
The God referenced in the above passage could be time. Miracles aren’t instantaneous, though they seem that way. Even the all-powerful one sometimes requires a grace period.
We have to keep up our labor. We can’t slack. We have to maintain our enthusiasm for our work so that we plant with love. That’s the key ingredient. That triggers it all.
Loving your seeds can miraculously make them flourish. Talking to a plant will change its behavior. The vibration of your voice, your very frequency, will make it grow.
Anything we do with enthusiasm will turn out better than what we accomplish begrudgingly. We’ll also feel better about ourselves for having done it. We’ll feel like we’ve done something good.
The Ticking Clock
I’m always amazed at the healing process. I had a horrific abscess on my foot a month ago that required a trip to the emergency room. It popped and oozed a gross mixture of blood and pus, exposing the raw tissue under the skin. The wound looked disgusting.
At first, it seemed as though it wasn’t healing, but within a few days, a scab began to form. A month later, there’s just a tiny bit left of the injury. With time, the body makes itself right.
The problem is that while we wait, we are aging too. It feels as if we’re running out of time all the time. That’s why we’re impatient. If we thought we had all the time in the world, what would be the harm in waiting?
The clock is always ticking. So we try to rush along with our plans. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with doing things quickly. I wanted to be among the youngest to accomplish everything. Early success convinced me that goals were easily achieved.
The reality is that even with great effort, the hands of the clock won’t move faster. A minute will still be sixty seconds. You will still have to wait for your prize.
The reward for your patience is a lush garden full of bright colors and the smell of spring. It’s all so beautiful that you forget the harsh winter you had to endure to get here. You can’t even remember the frost anymore. It’s as if this is how things have always been and will always be.
It feels that way in winter, too. It seems the bitter conditions will never end. As much as you know the warm weather is just a few months away, you’re consumed by the cold.
Sometimes when I’m looking for a parking spot, I have the thought that I’ll never find one. The longer the search, the more hopeless it feels. When I finally do find a place to park, I’m as grateful as I am for any other good thing that happens to me. Finding that spot feels like a miracle at the time.
But if you drive around enough, someone is bound to pull out of a spot. That’s the behind-the-scenes that you don’t see: the person who decides to leave their house to get in their car and give you a place to park. It’s a matter of timing. In this case, patience also means lower stress levels.
It’s crucial to be able to turn your attention to something else while you’re waiting for your seeds to grow. When you’re not watering your garden and talking to your plants, you should be occupied with other projects. The universe will do its work in the background while you stay busy. You don’t have to check in on God to see if he’s still doing his job.
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