The Sacred Art of Waiting (Yes, Really)
There was a time when the words “I’m waiting” felt like they were made of barbed wire.
They scratched their way out of my mouth with irritation, impatience, and a gnawing sense that my time was being wasted. Wasted in traffic. Wasted waiting for someone to show up. Wasted on hold for forty-five minutes only to be disconnected the moment a human being finally answered.
Wasted time. Lost time. Time I could never get back.
And oh, how I hated it.
My jaw would tighten. My shoulders would creep up around my ears. I’d start tapping my fingers, bouncing my knee, sighing like a tortured Victorian poet waiting for a quill delivery. I hated waiting with the fire of a thousand suns.
But somewhere along the way — after years of frazzle, frustration, and raising five kids (and let me tell you, if you want a crash course in patience, five kids will provide it) — something shifted.
From Barbed Wire to Breathing Room
I remember sitting in a hospital once, waiting for a friend. Instead of glaring at the clock or silently judging every second that passed, I just… sat. I breathed. I noticed the sounds around me.
And in that moment, something quietly radical happened:
I realised I didn’t hate waiting anymore.
In fact… I kind of liked it.
Now, I don’t mean the dreadful kind of waiting. Not the waiting that comes with bad news creeping toward your door like a horror movie soundtrack. That kind of waiting is heavy. It knots your stomach and floods your brain with anxious possibilities.
No — I mean the ordinary kind. The waiting in line. The waiting for the kettle to boil. The waiting in traffic. The sitting in a waiting room with nothing but outdated magazines and the faint smell of antiseptic.
That kind of waiting.
I used to loathe it. Now? I treasure it.
And if you’d told me years ago that I would one day be grateful for waiting, I probably would’ve thrown a stale biscuit at your head.
Patience, the Hard Way
I didn’t become patient by nature. I became patient out of sheer necessity.
When you’re raising a houseful of little humans, there are only three real options:
Learn patience.
Throw yourself off a bridge.
Get fitted for a room with quilted wallpaper.
Option One, please.
Not because it came easily, but because it was the only one that didn’t require restraints.
So yes, I became more patient. But I didn’t enjoy waiting. I tolerated it. Which is a very different thing. Waiting still felt like a nuisance. A necessary evil.
Until one day, I discovered something that changed everything.
A Doorway, Hiding in Plain Sight
Mindfulness.
Before you roll your eyes, hear me out. This isn’t about buying a singing bowl or sitting cross-legged on a mountain in imported yoga pants. Mindfulness is much simpler.
It’s noticing. Breathing. Being here.
When I started practicing mindfulness, time slowed. My body slowed. My breath deepened. My nervous system stopped jitterbugging on my adrenal glands like a caffeinated toddler in tap shoes.
And waiting? It became something else entirely.
It became a doorway. A gift. A soft pause in the day that didn’t demand productivity, didn’t require performance, didn’t ask me to tick a box on a list.
It was simply there. Waiting. Patiently. For me to notice it.
So I did.
Mini Meditations in the Everyday
I began to use waiting as a kind of micro-meditation. A moment to return to myself.
I’d notice the wood grain on the floor — the swirls, the lines, the texture underfoot.
I’d hear birdsong outside and let it wash through me.
I’d feel the chair beneath me, the way it held my weight, the pressure of my spine and elbows.
I’d observe the rise and fall of my chest, the stillness in the pause between inhale and exhale.
Sometimes I’d notice the people around me. The man tapping his foot. The woman leafing through a magazine from 2007 as though it were Pulitzer material. Snippets of conversation, a cough, the faint hum of fluorescent lights.
Nothing to fix. Nothing to judge. Just… noticing.
And the more I noticed, the more grounded I felt.
Because anxiety lives in the future. But peace lives in the now.
And when you anchor yourself in the now, all those racing thoughts, those what-ifs and oh-nos and why-didn’t-Is… they dissolve.
When the Universe Steps In
Now, don’t think I suddenly became a Zen monk. I’ve worked 14, 16, sometimes even 18-hour days. I loved the work, too. It lit me up, filled me with purpose, made me feel alive.
But the flip side of loving what you do is forgetting to pause. Forgetting to play. Forgetting to be.
And that’s when the Universe — cheeky as it is — sometimes steps in.
“Hey, you look like you could use a little time out, so here — have a three-hour delay and no cell service.”
Appointment cancelled. Website crashes. Flight delayed. Red light turns redder.
And I smile now, because I see it for what it is: a lovingly wrapped gift. A reminder that I’m not a machine. A pause, disguised as inconvenience.
Everyday Mindfulness
You don’t have to wait for the Universe to kill your Wi-Fi to practice this. You can begin anywhere.
Eating is a great place to start.
Notice the colours on your plate. The aroma rising up. The feel of your hand lifting the fork. The journey of your food — seed, soil, farmer, transport, plate. The miracle of your body digesting, jaw chewing, mouth watering — all without conscious thought.
You’ll be astonished at how much you miss when you’re rushing. And how deeply satisfying life becomes when you don’t.
Life turns into a living meditation. A string of small, sacred moments. Not dramatic. Not Instagram-worthy. But profoundly real.
The Sacred Pause
Here’s the wild thing: waiting is often the most productive part of the day.
Not because you’re doing more. But because you’ve stopped doing.
In stillness, you see things you miss in the blur of motion. In the pause, you hear your own intuition — the one that gets drowned out by honking horns and to-do lists. In the waiting, you reconnect with the fact that you’re alive right now, not just sprinting toward some future where you hope you’ll finally feel okay.
Waiting becomes wisdom.
Because when you stop scrambling for control, clarity has room to arrive.
When you stop rushing to the next thing, your body has space to rest.
When you stop resisting, the moment begins to open.
And in that opening, you might discover truths you’d overlooked. A softness you’ve been craving. Or maybe just the simple miracle of being held by the present moment.
Choosing the Pause
Here’s the part I love most: you don’t need to earn the right to rest. You don’t need to justify a pause. You don’t need to explain why you’re not doing more.
You get to breathe.
You get to be.
You get to trust that the in-between is sacred, too.
Because waiting isn’t wasted. Waiting isn’t empty.
Waiting is where the magic lives.
So the next time you catch yourself saying, “Ugh, I’m waiting,” try flipping it. Say it with a smile, as though it’s the most important thing on your to-do list. Because maybe it is.
Maybe waiting is the moment the Universe has been trying to give you all along.