We are all waiting for something. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for our prayers to be answered. Waiting for the next book in the series we really like to come out (I know it seems a little more trivial than the first two, but it is waiting). We are waiting for something to happen. Waiting for that thing, the thing which tells us what we are supposed to do, who we are supposed to be, where we are supposed to go. We sit with our expectations both great and small, good and bad and eventually we feel like we need to do something. The thing is, it’s the things we can’t control that eat away at us the most and sometimes we don’t know where to place our trust or where to look for answers. Hours, days, weeks, months, even years can go by in the waiting time and just when we feel like we can’t wait any longer something gives us hope, or maybe we even get our answer, the answer.

The struggle is that while we wait we often don’t know what we are really waiting for and yet we try to prepare in our expectational way for every eventuality. We need our expectations. They drive us; they keep us going, they give us something to look forward too, to work towards. We like to think that it’s not a matter of if, but when and perhaps how. The reality is we have to think that way because otherwise we end by giving up. Things don’t always end the way we expect them to, but that should never dampen our expectations.

How long are we willing to wait? How long is too long? Do we get to a point when the waiting has consumed us and we just want the rollercoaster to stop and let us out? Or do we persevere because the chance of something great is worth whatever we have to go through to get there and we want it to be great. Do bad days get us down or do they instead make us that much more thankful for the good ones. If days come when we can’t handle it and we just break down or want to lie in bed all day does that make us weak, or does it simply mean that we are human and that a part of us understands the need to take care of our self because if we don’t we won’t be ready, we won’t be able to enjoy it when (notice the when) great comes.

There is a point at which we must adjust our expectations, but only we ourselves get to decide when that point comes. The thing is, when we adjust we don’t loose our sense of expectation, we allow one thing to be what it is and we open ourselves to other possibilities and the creation of new expectations.

We are all waiting for something. How we wait can define us or break us. We need our expectations. We need hope.