Patience in the process
By Jessica Brodie
I’ve heard it said there are starters and finishers when it comes to creativity—people who, when it comes to projects, prefer to begin them and those who prefer to finish them. Which one are you? I’m in the latter category.
While I love brainstorming and the thrill of something new as much as anyone, what really gets me is that blissful feeling of closure when something I care about is done and out there in the world. For example, when an article or blog I’ve written is now online, reaching people, or when the Christian newspaper I produce has gone to press for the month and I can sit back in the sweet satisfaction of knowing something I’ve worked hard to accomplish has completed the cycle and I can turn over the proverbial blank page in my notebook.
I personally prefer to start and finish projects in a relatively short time. I’m a novelist, and just as I don’t like to read the same book over the course of months, I also don’t like to write books that take too long to write. And when something stalls out right in the middle? The discomfort is indescribable.
I just finished final edits of my latest novel, which stalled out twice—not because of the story but because of difficult situations in my family life. After both stalls, it felt like I were starting over from the very beginning. It wasn’t easy to push through, but I had to, and finally, thanks be to God and the power of prayers from some good friends, I did.
The middle ground of any process can be brutally tough. The beginning and end are exciting, but the boring middle? That’s incredibly difficult. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have an idea, press through with gusto, and quickly complete the task? Jump from A to C with steady speed?
Yet the middle ground is where the magic happens, where the self-growth and discipline come from, where we gain the gumption and grit necessary to cultivate wisdom.
My desire to jump from A to C, for immediate transformation and gratification, I suppose is the perspective the younger me took with a lot of things. I wanted to fall in love and voila—be married! I wanted to start a job and voila—run the company! I wanted to start an exercise regime and voila—complete the marathon!
And, sadly, it was my approach to faith, too. When I decided to follow Christ, I expected the rest of the fruits and gifts to automatically appear. When I didn’t instantly experience the peace of Christ or the perfect hope of the believer, I wondered if I were a fraud or just “not good enough” for God’s heavenly family.
I didn’t understand the process often takes time. While a decision to be “in Christ” and a request to be saved secured my salvation, experiencing contentment and feeling “close with” Jesus aren’t always immediate.
I had to be patient in the process and, more importantly, accept the odd, uncomfortable feelings that can go along with this.
That patience required me both to understand and fully expect that if I kept my heart turned to Him and followed the path diligently—praying, reading Scripture, going to church, heeding the nudge of the Holy Spirit—eventually, I’d arrive at the peace and contentment I sought.
Patience has another name: Faith. And for me, it’s often a perspective switch.
I look at it like a pot of water I’ve just set on the stove to cook pasta. I can fill the pot, put it on the stove, and turn the burner on high, but there’s nothing I can do next to hurry the process along. I have to wait for the water to boil. I know it will, eventually. All the requirements have been met. I can stand at the stove, my eye on the pot, anxious and miserable as time seems to pass interminably, or I can sit back and trust the process. Either way, it will happen.
It's also like getting in shape. Just because someone decides to become physically fit doesn’t mean it happens overnight. It takes effort, time, discipline. You need to eat healthily, exercise, turn flab into muscle, and persist. You can make yourself miserable and stand on the scale every morning or measure your thighs nightly for inches lost, agonizing about how long it’s taking. Or you can allow yourself to surrender to the process, even to enjoy it, and then notice your transformation when you come up for air.
I find surrender makes it not only happen more enjoyably but often faster, for it’s in the surrender that I gain the big-picture wisdom the Lord wants me to know.
If you’re in a waiting period, whether that’s with a relationship or career situation or spiritually, consider whether you’re fighting the middle ground, trying to gain a foothold in the middle of the ocean, or whether you’re surrendering to the One who created that ocean in the first place.
Sometimes, abiding in Jesus means embracing that strange, uncomfortable middle and acknowledging your faith and patience need to grow.
Sometimes, it’s embracing the mindset of the father of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9 who begged Jesus to help his son “if” He could.
“‘If you can’? said Jesus. ‘Everything is possible for one who believes.’ Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:23-24 NIV).
Don’t fight that middle ground, my friends. Surrender to it, knowing that faith often stems from patience in the process.
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THANKS TO MY SPONSORS: MATT BRODIE, EMILY DODD, KATHLEEN PATELLA, BILLY ROBINSON, AND LANNY TURNER.
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