Patience.
Patience, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult virtues, but it’s the greatest ability to have when dealing with difficult situations.
For me, the hardest thing I had to deal with when I was going through recovery for my eating disorder was waiting.
Waiting for my brain to stop reverting back to old ways of disordered thinking. Waiting for my body to heal from restricting. Waiting for a normal life. The waiting seemed to never end. It felt like a tunnel where you couldn’t see the light at the end, an eternity of expecting things to get better.
Its hard to be patient when you don’t know when things are going to change. It’s easy to practice patience in the middle of 5 o’clock traffic; but when times get rough and you are in the middle of winter, so to speak, it’s nearly impossible to wait. I’ve learned the hard way that the best things in life take time. Very rarely does something great sprout overnight.
“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.” – Robert H. Schuller
When I first began recovery for my eating disorder, my agent told me that she thought it would be good for me to grow a plant while I start this difficult new chapter in my life. While I learned how to take care of this plant, I was also learning how to take care of myself. While I was growing, the plant was growing. I honestly harmed a few plants in the process, but learning how to grow a plant is similar to dealing with a difficult time. Nothing is going to go the way you plan, but once you figure out the right balance of water, sun and soil, you just wait and trust that your plant will grow.
My little plant seed saw nothing but darkness, but when time was right, it flourished and grew into a little sprout. The same was true with my recovery. There is a reason that flowers bloom in the Spring. Spring always follows Winter, but sometimes when Spring will come is unclear.
“We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.” – Helen Keller
When you are in a seemingly never-ending bad season in your life and waiting feels like its next to impossible, know that there are always good things to follow. It might not be as quick and easy as expected, but with the coldest Winter usually brings the most beautiful Spring. Circumstances change; the situations you face will not last forever, but learning how to wait in the midst of difficult times will teach you how to trust in the next Winter.
Corrie Ten Boom once said, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
