Joyful Waiting

Learning to live while the answer is still on its way

Waiting is difficult.

Waiting for an answer. Waiting for a decision. Waiting for something to change. Waiting for relief. Waiting for the thing you have hoped, prayed, worked, or fought for to finally happen.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes when there is nothing left for you to do.

You have made the call. Submitted the paperwork. Had the conversation. Asked for help. Said the prayer. Taken the next step.

And now, you wait.

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t not knowing what will happen. It is figuring out how to live while you don’t know.

Uncertainty has a way of occupying more space than we intended to give it. We check the phone again. Refresh the email. Replay conversations. Calculate possibilities. Watch the clock. Imagine what happens if the answer is yes and prepare ourselves for what happens if it is no.

Without realizing it, life can become suspended around the thing we are waiting for.

I will breathe when this is resolved.

I will rest when I know.

I will celebrate when this is over.

I will live again when things are better.

But some seasons don’t resolve quickly.

And when life is already hard, waiting for everything to become okay before allowing ourselves to experience joy can mean postponing living for a very long time.

Joyful waiting does not mean the waiting itself is joyful. It doesn’t require pretending uncertainty doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean minimizing what is at stake or forcing ourselves to be positive when we are frightened, exhausted, disappointed, or overwhelmed.

Joyful waiting is allowing joy to coexist with uncertainty. It is refusing to postpone joy until the waiting is over.

It is understanding that two things can be true at the same time:

I desperately want this situation to change.

And I am still allowed to experience something good today.

There can be laughter before the answer comes. There can be rest before everything is resolved. There can be dinner with people we love, music playing in the kitchen, a walk outside, a funny television show, a workout, a conversation that makes us smile.

Those moments do not mean the difficult thing matters less.

They mean the difficult thing does not get to consume everything.

At Seven’s Grace, we often say, “We are not here to wait for the storm to pass. We are here to learn to dance in the rain.”

Sometimes we imagine dancing in the rain as something dramatic—an extraordinary display of resilience in the middle of hardship.

But perhaps it is much more ordinary than that.

Sometimes dancing in the rain is getting out of bed. Sometimes it is enjoying your coffee instead of spending those ten minutes worrying. Sometimes it is putting on music. Sometimes it is noticing something beautiful. Sometimes it is allowing yourself to laugh—really laugh—even though absolutely nothing about the situation you are facing has changed.

Sometimes dancing in the rain simply means refusing to put your entire life on hold while you wait.

For a woman living through crisis, that can be especially difficult.

There may be things she cannot fix today. Systems that move slowly. Decisions outside her control. Relationships she cannot change. Financial problems that require time. Healing that cannot be rushed. Questions that simply do not have answers yet.

When so much feels uncertain, the unresolved thing can slowly become the center of everything.

But life is still happening.

There are still moments worth noticing. People worth loving. Things that can make us laugh. Beauty that can still be seen. Parts of ourselves that still deserve room to breathe.

We do not have to wait until everything is fixed to participate in our own lives again.

Maybe the answer comes today.

Maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe the situation changes tomorrow. Maybe the road is longer than we hoped.

Joyful waiting is not certainty that everything will unfold exactly as we want it to. It is choosing not to surrender today entirely to what we cannot yet know about tomorrow.

So we make the call. Take the next step. Ask for help. Rest when we need to. Cry when we need to.

And when something makes us laugh, we laugh.

When something brings us joy, we let ourselves feel it.

When life offers us a moment worth living, we don’t have to turn it away simply because the storm hasn’t passed.

Because perhaps that is what dancing in the rain really is.

Not waiting for life to become easy again.

Living while life is still hard.

We wait.

We hope.

And while we wait, we live.