6 Tips for Waiting Well / (especially when you're NOT where you want to be)
Welcome back to my first post of 2025! I have lots planned for this year so I hope you’ll Subscribe at the bottom of this post, and stick around. Today, I’m sharing tips for staying content in the waiting. Having moved from apartment to apartment, state to state, living full time in a 36ft RV for 3 years, and being a mother of five children under 7, I know ALL about being in transition, the grief that comes with it, and longing for the stability of HOME. To this day my family and I are still in a waiting period, but thanks to the grace of our Heavenly Father, we have learned many ways to wait WELL. I hope this post helps you to do the same.
Feel free to share this post to encourage others who are in their own seasons of waiting. I’m convinced it will be a blessing to them!
1. Surrender your plans in prayer
I didn’t want to face it at first, but discontentment is a heart issue. Hands down, the biggest change in my discontent heart was a result of surrendering MY plans in prayer. Releasing our plans to God allows us to release our burdens to Him as well. Instead of asking Him to change our circumstances, it may be time to ask Him to change our hearts to endure them with joy.
Surrendering my plans in prayer gave me an opportunity to walk out my faith by remembering the Most High’s faithfulness, His perfect timing, and that His ways are always better. Isn’t our Heavenly Father good?? Doesn’t He love us? Won’t we have access to unexplainable peace in hard times purely by having His son, Yeshua/Jesus in our lives even if we never reach our earthly goals? With much prayer, He’s opened my eyes, and changed my heart from being restless to trusting. He’s not only taught me how to wait, but how to wait WELL.
2. Grow in your season of waiting
You know what I hate? This sentence: “WHEN this happens, THEN I’ll…” In my experience, this statement is a heavy dose of excuses and wasted time. Instead of staying bitter and stagnant in our circumstances we should be finding ways to grow. You want to know what really passes the time when you’re waiting? GROWING!
Make a list of things you’d like to accomplish in your life, and then refuse to believe the lie that your current situation can’t allow you, in some way, to work towards that goal! For instance, my family and I are working towards becoming more sustainable. When we were stationary RV living for a few months, or a year at a time, we planted a garden...if it even counted as a garden. Our then garden was just a square foot of flowers to bring a reminder of beauty and hope to our dull environment. (We couldn’t grow veggies there because the ground in that RV park was a literal sewer, yuck!) But we still grew flowers.
In the next RV park we were able to start a grow bag garden and practice growing veggies! We made some mistakes along the way, but quickly realized that a season of waiting is the perfect time for experimenting and making mistakes. Upon this realization all of our confined thinking shifted to endless opportunities!
Today, we still find ourselves in a waiting period, but now we have access to our very own 4x8 garden, uninhibited sunlight, and are successfully growing delicious veggies for yummy recipes because we learned from those past mistakes. During that timeframe I also learned how to make butter from cream, sourdough bread from starter, ferment veggies, watercolor, knit, and more!
So whether it’s learning an instrument, starting a business, a blog, gardening, whatever it is…START growing NOW. It will help you pass time, evolve, and prepare you for your next desired season of life. I’m so thankful I didn’t wait to start finding new hobbies and skills that I love and enjoy. Trust me, your future self will thank you!
3. Open yourself up to the good around you!
I used to block out the good, and refuse to acknowledge positive things in my waiting season because I didn't want to see them. I felt if I acknowledged these things, I’d never be able to leave the place I was in. That was foolish. You may not be where you physically want to be right now, but the Father is very capable of revealing beauty wherever you are if you let Him.
For instance, at the time I was very shy and timid in social settings because I didn’t want to get attached, committed, or have a reason to stay where I was. This kept me out of community and left me feeling anxious! Once I realized how I was hurting myself, I started taking leaps of faith in areas I longed to fill. Since then I’ve found an incredible homeschool group with life-giving friendships I never expected to cultivate right where I am. I also found an amazing congregation to spend our Sabbath fellowships with. I can’t tell you how rich my waiting season has been since then.
It’s not right to put a pause on life until our ideals line up. It’s important to find adventure, make new friends, and try new things. In other words, don’t stop living, or you will have wasted time stalling potential beauty that the Father has for your life.
4. Keep a gratitude journal
As believers in Yeshua/Jesus, do we really want to spend any area of our lives in blatant discontentment? Keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to remember the “Goodness of God”…which btw is the name of my current favorite song by Cece Winans! If you’re a visual person like I am, you may need to daily write down things you are grateful for to really make it click that there ARE many things to be thankful for even in your season of waiting. Philippians 4:8 says, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” In other words, there is beauty all around us. We just have to commit to setting our minds on it.
5. Stop venting to everyone about it!
Change up your topic of conversation! At one point, I found my fear-filled whining, and “what-ifs” dominating all of my social conversations! It was as if a black cloud was hovering above me, and about to burst open at any moment. I had to repent!
The more I complained, the more I reaped a headache, and carried the after-guilt of burdening so many friends and family with my obsessive worrying for my “perfect timeline.” (While having trusted confidants is nothing to be ashamed of, we don’t want to become like broken records, obsessing over our problems in every conversation with them.) Philippians 4:6-7 says “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” We need to create habits of speaking LIFE into our minds and onto our tongues rather than becoming enslaved to our problems!
6. Have an end goal to work towards
Sometimes, not having an end in sight to your season of waiting can be extremely stressful and daunting. Maybe you don't know when your season of difficulty will end? Setting future dates to help you re-evaluate your circumstances is a great idea. In fact, it can give uncertain timelines a sense of relief.
Maybe you aren’t healthy, and you’d like to lose weight to reach a certain standard of health? Give yourself a monthly goal to check your progress and celebrate your efforts in small ways. This will give you a sense of reward, progression, and something to look forward to. Instead of seeing an endless road, you will see points of rest and achievement. Maybe you want to move, but you are waiting for a job offer? Give yourself a goal of a certain number of applications to send out before the end of the month. Continue to give yourself goals to keep you motivated and moving forward.
Are YOU in a season of waiting? I hope you enjoyed these tips for helping you to stay content. Share this post with someone that can use it! Remember, nothing on earth lasts forever. The quicker we learn to accept, grow, and thrive in the season we’re in, the more joyful every season of our life will be! Happy waiting season!
Cool, Mom, and Collectedly Yours,
