How the Coronavirus is Teaching Me to Wait Well

The wait for the end of the Coronavirus is stressful. Can I get an amen?

“How are you doing with the uncertainty of this time?” she asked me via FaceTime the other day.

“Not well,” I admitted with a chuckle. “I wish I just knew when all this would end and life would go back to normal.”

“How would knowing when it will end change what you’re currently doing?” she replied.

I thought for a second. “I’d start a count-down,” I grinned. The excitement of counting down for things always helps me while I wait. I had a Spring Break countdown going, as well as a summer countdown… although now when I see that it makes me sad because I wish I was at school with my students.

I continued, “I don’t know, I just think knowing when it will end would help the waiting process be so much easier. Then I’d know for sure that this isn’t going to last forever because I could think to myself, ‘The Coronavirus will be gone by this date and all will go back to normal.’ But presently, the mystery of it all is stressing me out.”

“Do you tend to have a hard time waiting for things with no timeline?” she asked.

My mind jumped to how I’m hoping to one day get engaged to my boyfriend- but how I don’t know when that will be. And then I remembered how hard it was for me to wait to start dating, to begin with.

“Yes.” I sighed.

“So what can this time of waiting for the virus to end teach you?”

“How to wait well,” I instantly said, thinking of a Phylicia Masonheimer blog post. “I suppose I’ll always have something to wait for- engagement, then actually getting married, then potentially having kids in the future and waiting for that.”

Pausing, I saw her face nod on my phone screen.

I went on, “I suppose in the meantime of waiting for this virus to end, I can think of ways to make the most of this time I’ve been given.”

Just like how I should whilst dating. I thought.

Waiting for something with no end in sight can be frustrating, to say the least.

When I was single/newly dating, I wrote several posts about waiting.

• How to Endure a Season of Waiting
• 4 Things to do When God says “Wait.”
• What a Children’s Book Taught Me About Waiting

Yet I think how to wait well is still a lesson I can be taught.

From the very beginning of my relationship with Caleb, I knew I wouldn’t be dating him forever. Either we’d get married or we’d break up. So, with that in mind, I determined to enjoy this time of dating to the best of my ability and not get concerned with when we’d get engaged.

I think Phylicia Masonheimer was right in saying “The question you should be asking is not ‘How soon will this be over?” but “Am I waiting well?'” and “The point is in the waiting: Who you become by trusting God.” (Source)

We will ALWAYS have to wait for something

So we might as well learn how to wait well.

Presently the thing at the front of all our minds is this Coronavirus pandemic. When will it be over? When will our lives go back to normal? To quote Rapunzel in Disney’s Tangled: “When will my life begin?”

We wait for the end of the pandemic and for our lives to return to normal. I think that how we handle this period of waiting can teach us a lot for other times of waiting we’ll face in our lives.

Such as engagement. Or getting a boyfriend. Or having a baby. Going to college. Graduation. Getting a driver’s license.

You get the idea :)

Because the fact of the matter is no one apart from God knows when this pandemic will end. And no one knows when you’ll start dating or get a car or get that promotion at work.

Take it from a girl who loves her countdown app- knowing the end date doesn’t necessarily make the waiting easier. The only true change is you can see a number ticking down each day. But you don’t want to just sit there, staring at the calendar and watching for the number of days to decrease. As the saying goes, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

So let’s have fun while we wait!

Let’s find ways to enjoy this time and cherish the season, no matter how hard and impossible it is.

If you’re waiting for a boyfriend, discover ways to enjoy your singleness!

If you’re waiting for engagement, look at the good in your relationship. Find fun things for you and your boyfriend to do now.

If you’re waiting for this virus to end, look for positive things about the situation. Come up with at least 3 good things that are happening, either directly in your life, in your community or state, or the world as a whole.

Want to know my positive things?

1. Everyone is experiencing the same thing across our nation and world and so our ability to empathize with each other is higher than it might otherwise be. For example, Hurricane Harvey greatly affected Texas a few years ago. But if you live in Maine, you might have heard about it on the news, but it didn’t personally affect you. With the Coronavirus, we are all somehow affected by it.
2. I’m learning new and creative ways to teach using technology that I can use in the future when we go back to brick-and-mortar school.
3. I have time to go on walks and enjoy springtime that I wouldn’t have if I was at work.

Also, come up with small ways to have fun during this time. I wrote a post last week called “10 Ways to Have Fun While Stuck at Home” that you might want to check out.

Before we wrap this up, I have one last tip for waiting during this pandemic to share with you.

Look for Normalcy.

I walked down the sidewalk listening to a new podcast episode and I spotted a few bluebonnets sprinkled on a field nearby. “Thank you, God, for some sort of normalcy,” I breathed, grateful.

I love Texas in the spring. It’s gorgeous! And thankfully, the Coronavirus cannot stop the flowers from growing.

It cannot stop the birds from singing.

And it cannot stop the sun from shining.

Jesus Himself told His followers to look at the birds and the wildflowers as a way to stop worrying.

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing?

²⁶ Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?²⁷ Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying?²⁸ And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread.²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these.³⁰ If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith?

³¹ So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’³² For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.³⁴ Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

 

-Matthew 6:25-34, Christian Standard Version

I encourage you to find some normalcy in your life.

Perhaps it will be in nature. Perhaps in your routine. But knowing that something is the same while so much in our world is changing is very uplifting to me and I’m sure it will be for you as well.

I hope you stay well during this crazy time, dear friend.

Wash your hands. Practice good hygiene. Stay away from people best you can in accordance with your state’s ordinances. Follow CDC guidelines. You know what to do ;)

Praying for you,
Kara

Let’s be Instagram friends! @kara_beth17

Posted by Kara Beth & filed under Dating, Engagement, Singleness. This post has 4 comments.