The Art of Waiting

Morning has always belonged to the patient.

Not the people who leap out of bed before sunrise with a perfectly organized day ahead of them. I admire those people, but I have never been one of them. The mornings I know best begin slowly. A kettle warming on the stove. The light finding its way through the curtains one inch at a time. Birds beginning conversations long before the rest of us remember to speak.

There is something about those quiet hours that refuses to be rushed.

I used to think waiting was simply what happened before life began again. Waiting for the coffee to brew. Waiting for an email. Waiting for answers. Waiting for the right opportunity, the right season, the right version of myself. I treated waiting like an inconvenience, something to endure until the real story continued.

Lately, I've begun to wonder if I had it backwards.

Perhaps waiting is part of the story.

The garden doesn't apologize for taking its time. The sun doesn't hurry over the horizon because we're feeling impatient. Even the seasons know that becoming is not something to be rushed.

And yet we're so hard on ourselves for growing slowly.

We want certainty before taking the first step. We want every loose end tied up before we allow ourselves to rest. We want tomorrow's answers while we're still standing in today.

The morning never seems bothered by any of this.

It simply arrives.

It asks nothing of us except that we notice it.

This morning I watched the steam curl from my tea while the house was still quiet. I noticed how the maple leaves outside my study window were moving in a breeze I couldn't yet feel. A rabbit crossed the yard without the slightest concern for the clock on my kitchen wall. The world carried on without asking whether I had figured everything out.

I found that strangely comforting.

There is a gentleness to early mornings that I wish we carried with us throughout the rest of the day. They remind me that not everything important happens all at once. Some things reveal themselves slowly, the way dawn quietly replaces darkness without ever making a grand announcement.

Maybe patience isn't about learning to tolerate the wait.

Maybe it's learning to see what the waiting has been trying to show us all along.

I've missed so many beautiful moments because I was busy looking ahead. The first robin of spring. The smell of rain before the clouds arrived. The way sunlight lingers on the kitchen table for only a few minutes before moving on.

Those moments were never hidden.

I simply wasn't looking.

So if your morning feels slower than you'd planned, perhaps let it be. Drink your coffee while it's still warm. Watch the light change across the room. Listen to the birds before the traffic has its turn. Trust that what is meant for today will arrive in its own time.

The world has survived every sunrise without our hurry.

I think we'll be alright if we do the same.

Until next time,

— Jericho