Ali Ballweg

            I used to think defining moments and “big” moments were the same thing.  Then when I wrote the first version of Sitting, Waiting, Wishing I started to get on the right track, but still didn’t completely grasp the concept of a moment.  Today I can say that I sincerely understand the power of a moment.

            Erwin Raphael McManus poses a wonderful question the very first pages of his book Chasing Daylight.  He asks, “What if you knew that there was a moment coming, a divine moment, one where God would meet you in such a way that nothing would be the same again?”  Directly following this he says, “Moments are as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands in the sea, and any of them could prove to be your most significant divine moments.  Within those moments, a handful will become the defining moments of your life.  However mundane a moment may appear, the miraculous may wait to be unwrapped within it.  You rarely know up front the eternal significance of a moment.  When a moment is missed, you have a glimpse at an opportunity lost.  When you dream, you look to a moment still to come.  The moment that you must seize right now is the one in front of you.”

            I find this passage (as well as this book as a whole) wonderfully put.  In the past I have found myself sitting, waiting, wishing for a defining moment to come along and change my life; for anything to happen to me.  I didn’t at all recognize that I was supposed to do the doing.  And so in the process of sitting, waiting and wishing, I have watched opportunity after opportunity float past me.  Only I didn’t see them as opportunities, divine moments sent by God, at the time.  We all do it, it’s only after that we see the amazing moments we let pass me by.  Sitting, waiting and wishing are not going to cause your life to change, keeping your eyes and mind wide open and staying on the edge of your seat, ready for anything, so you can grasp moments as they present themselves will.  Then you will change into the person you’ve always dreamt of being.

            The person I’ve always dreamt of being is someone whose life and actions make a difference in the world.  The things that have kept me from becoming this person are my shyness and fear of reaching out to others.  But as Helen Keller said, “Face you deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you.  Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.”  I have learned that being afraid of something that I don’t even need to outcome of is not helping anyone.  The quote I need to start living by is, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.  All life is an experiment” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

            Anther great quote is by Charles Du Bos and is, “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could be.”  But how do you get to that point?  It’s obvious not just something that’s going to happen overnight.  You need to start making right choices, seizing the right moments, RIGHT NOW.  Because if you don’t, as Chasing Daylight says, “When we fail to choose, we choose to fail.  You cannot put your life on hold.  It moves forward with or without your approval.  Choosing not to choose does not put off the problem; it only exacerbates it.”  However just as not choosing makes a problem worse, choosing makes situations, and in time your life, immensely better.

            So I urge those of you who may be sitting, waiting, wishing for more in life, to stop.  Just as an essay never gets written unless you start writing down your ideas, your life will never truly begin until you start seizing moments.  I still think Robin Jones Gunn put it best when she said, “This is life.  This is your crazy amazing life and nothing happened today that didn’t pass through God’s fingers before it came to you.”  Every moment that comes your way is a gift from God, don’t let them pass you by, instead begin to seize them and then watch as your life begins to transform.  Good luck to all and God Bless.

I wrote this thought or devotion, whatever you’d like to call it back in June of 2007.  I still think it’s a wonderful piece of my writing and still believe what I wrote, but as I’ve been in the process of reading Chasing Daylight I have come up with another thought.  It is very different, almost the polar opposite, but it could just as easily be labeled by the same title when I am done writing it.  So here’s a look at what I wrote a year and a half ago…  And expect something much more amazing within the next few days. 

I’ve always thought of defining moments as huge turning points.  I’ve envisioned them as events like the death of a loved one, a near death experience, the diagnosis of a fatal disease, or a suicide attempt.  I’ve also pictured that these moments suddenly make life perfectly clear.  And, well, I’ve never had anything of significance importance happen in my life so here I’ve been SITTING trying to understand life and making no headway whatsoever.

           But then this afternoon something changed; call it a defining moment if you will.  I was talking online to Mitch and he was telling me to “Just wait until this weekend”, when I’m meeting up with a bunch of friends to go camping.  And then it just hit me like a soccer ball flying at top speed straight into my face; “Sometimes I feel like all life consists of is waiting for the next weekend, or the next visit, or the next break,” I told him.  His reply was simple but exactly what I was thinking, “Because you can’t go back, all you can do is wait for the future.”  “And waiting tests my patience, or lack thereof, every single day,” I said.  Then Mitch replied in the most curious way, “Patience is a virtue.  What does that even mean?”

           And that’s so so true.  What does it mean?  I’ve grown up hearing it repeated by my parents, pastors, and teachers and even said it to my Sunday School class when I was teaching them about the fruits of the spirit.  But what does it mean?  I couldn’t answer Mitch so I ended our conversation to go for a run.  I do some of my best thinking when I’m running so inevitably the question kept popping into my mind. 

          There are nine different definitions for the word patience but my favorite is, ‘quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence’.  The word virtue also carries nine meanings, with my preference falling to, ‘a good or admiral quality or property.’  Ok so it should be simple enough, “patience is a virtue” must mean that diligence is a good quality to have.  I could give Mitch that answer and he’d probably be happy enough with it; but I’m not.

          I’m one of those people who won’t settle with a cookie cutter answer, I want to know what’s behind the answer.  In this case, I want to know why God continues to give me patience even though I keep screwing it up and how he can have so much patience with me when I screw up.  But I think I’ve always known the answer, it just has taken Mitch presenting this question to me to get me to think about it.  It’s love.  It all roots back to that famous bible verse from 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 which inevitably starts with ‘Love is patient, love is kind…’ and ends in ‘Love never fails’. 

So Mitch, ‘Patience is a virtue’ means that God loves us so much that he’ll always be  patient with us, even when we ourselves aren’t be patient with him or others.

But this brings me back to the whole “sometimes it seems like all life consists of is waiting.”  I feel like I’m constantly WAITING for something to happen and when it does finally happen I’m already waiting for something else.  It’s almost as if my life were a series of dots all strung together by lines that go all over the place.  The song Life Is a Highway sums it up pretty good.  We need to remember that it’s not just about the destination; it’s just as much about the ride.  And guess who’s riding shotgun?  God.  And while sometimes it may feel like you’re going to crash, he’ll always be there for you to straighten you out and get you back on track. 

Robins Jones Gunn states this perfectly in my favorite quote when he says, “This is life.  This is your crazy amazing life and nothing happened today that didn’t pass through God’s fingers before it came to you.”

Proof of this can be found everywhere I look every single day.  But one way it shows up in talking about waiting is in the saying ‘I can’t wait for…’  Because if you really think about it, you can wait, and you do.  I hear myself saying in my head “I can’t wait for this train to pass so I can keep driving”, but I don’t drive into the side of the train, instead I use the patience that God has given me to wait until it’s gone.  I’m constantly saying “I can’t wait to see you,” but I do wait.  If I couldn’t wait, because I didn’t have the patience God gave me, then I’d forget about my job and other responsibilities and drive to see the person right away.

So in the end it’s God who gives us patience, tests our patience, and ultimately has patience with us.  And as I lay here typing, I’m WISHING that he’d show other people how patience is a virtue and that defining moments aren’t necessarily huge and don’t give you a complete understanding of life, but rather just a sliver of insight that leaves you wanting more and keeps your patience in check.