Have you ever felt like everyone around you were in their time and you weren’t in yours?
On Tuesday, we had snow on our farm. It snows quite often in our area so while it isn’t a major surprise, I still get so excited whenever it happens. I jump out of bed and put on warm clothes and immediately run around the garden playing in the snow and taking millions of photos.
“What does this have to do with anything?” you may be thinking. It may seem irrelevant but the snow brought me to a realisation.
Snow days
All winter I had been waiting and hoping for snow. It snowed in areas near us and I kept thinking to myself, “When is it going to snow here?” and I kept getting disheartened everytime the weather forecast predicted snow and it never snowed. Then as I was eating my breakfast on Tuesday morning, looking out at the snow covered grass, I realized that my snow day had arrived. And I still enjoyed it after having to wait so long. I didn’t linger on the feeling that I was “robbed” or that it had taken so long to come. I was just so happy that it did come. Then it hit me – we are all essentially waiting for our snow days to arrive.
A snow day can mean whatever you want it to mean to you. For me, my snow day – in a more figurative sense – has been waiting for a job offer to come through. I finished up my post grad in June and ever since I have been applying daily to countless jobs. Not one has been successful. It has been a trying time and it really knocks one’s confidence to either a) get rejected or b) just never hear back from a company. I’ve had friends around me land jobs and while I have been truly happy for them, I keep wondering when it will be my time to celebrate a new job post.
I feel like sometimes we feel so pressured to be where everyone else is at in their lives. We look around and we uphold ourselves to a measuring stick set by society of someone else’s life. When in reality, none of us have the same timeline. There is no universally set timeline. Society has placed such a pressure on this made up standard that we all should achieve certain milestones at specific stages in our lives but it is so unrealistic. We each go through different times in our lives at difference paces, because we all have different life circumstances. And that is okay. Each of our journeys up the mountain are WILDLY different. Some of us aren’t even on the same mountain let alone the same path. Yet, we compare ourselves as if we are?
a time for everything
I was doing my daily devotions and I came across a passage in the Bible that helped me come to better terms with what I have been feeling.
For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven
Ecclesiastes 3:1
The chapter goes on to list activities with their opposites. It really opened my eyes that there is an opportune time for everything in our lives. Sometimes we are in the time we are in because we still have to learn something. Sometimes we need to be quiet instead of saying something. Sometimes we need to heal first. Sometimes we need to rest and take a breather before we move further up the mountain. There is no shame in being at different times of your life. God just cemented further than I am exactly where I am meant to be right now. So are you. Your path will unfold when it is time.
I still am anxious with the job hunt, but I now have learnt to take comfort in the fact that my time will come. There will be a time where I enter the working world. Right now, I believe I am in a time where my soul needs to rest and grow. I need to learn to be okay with the time I am in before I can move on to the next.
If you think about it, life would be pretty boring if we all experienced everything all at the same time. We are all on such different journeys and it is unrealistic to even begin to compare. Your time WILL come. While someone else’s time may come before yours, it doesn’t diminish where you are. It doesn’t diminish who you are. You are not a failure for not being where someone else is at. We are all works in progress going through the different stages of life at our own, unique pace.
embrace the time you are in
So while others may be building a snowman; some may be walking through the flowers in spring having already experienced the snow and some may be watching the leaves fall preparing for the snow – it does not make the time in your life when the snow comes any less beautiful. The waiting period is difficult, I know, but try to embrace it. You might be in the rainy period right now, or the cold, or the sunshine or the windy time. Learn what you can from each period because when your snow arrives (whatever that may be to you), it will be magical. It will be everything you have ever wanted and more. It will be worth the wait. It always is.
So dance in the rain, bask in the sunlight and walk in the wind. There is a time for everything and your time will come.
All the love, Jay.
Just Jay 