The Slow Pace of What Cannot Be Rushed
Some seasons of my life move slowly. I trust the slowness. I let it do its work.
You are inside a slow season, and you did not choose its pace. There is nothing wrong with you for being inside one. Some things in a life ripen on their own schedule. Some processes take the time they take. The mind, eager for resolution, wants the slow season to be over, and the body, exhausted by sustained attention, agrees. But the slowness has its own rhythm, and the slowness is not, in itself, the problem.
You may have imagined, at the beginning of this season, that it would be brief — that the difficult chapter would have a clear end date, that the hard period would conclude before the calendar turned too many pages. That has not turned out to be true, and the discrepancy between what you imagined and what is actually happening can itself be exhausting. You have spent energy bracing for an end that has not arrived. You have rehearsed the relief many times in your mind. The relief has stayed in the future. You are still here, in the long middle.
The long middle is a real place, and it is not lesser than the beginning or the end. It is its own season. The middle has its own light, its own weather, its own small possibilities. You do not have to spend the middle waiting for it to be over. You can, if you choose, live inside it. You can let the long middle be your life right now, rather than the place you are passing through on the way to your real life.
The slow pace of this season is teaching you patience, even if you did not ask to learn it — small thing by small thing, hour by hour — by giving you small things to attend to while the large resolution is not yet available. It is teaching you that you can survive a season that does not end on your timeline. It is teaching you that you are stronger and more durable than you knew. These are not consolation prizes. These are real changes happening inside you. They are part of what the slowness is doing.
Today, let yourself stop waiting for the season to be over. Let yourself be inside it. Pour the cup of tea. Take the slow walk. Read the page. Let the slow time be yours.