Last week I was watching a TV show, in which a character died, and then went to a place where she reunited with her loved ones. It was comfortable and safe—a place to pause and rest, before moving on to the next life.
I turned to my husband and said, “She’s sitting in God’s waiting room.”
My words struck me; they came back to me several times in the following days. I kept turning the phrase over in my mind. I knew there was a deeper message for me.
There have been times when I’ve been stuck in waiting mode, or worse, in survival mode. When I no longer fit in my old life, yet I was unable to move on. I either believed that I couldn’t live the life I wanted, or I wasn’t able to see what was possible.
Your Beliefs Frame Your Vision
Your beliefs about what’s possible, and the vision you hold for your life, are inextricably linked.
When you believe that the universe supports you, and that you are part of a bigger purpose, your openness allows you to see possibilities you might have missed otherwise. That’s when you feel most inspired.
When the vision of something you want is so strong that your belief in what’s possible has to expand to support it, you feel the most driven.
I’ve felt inspired many times in my life, and synchronicity always plays a role. I wrote about one of those times in my blog post, Changing Your Perspective.
One of the times I’ve felt most driven was years ago, when I applied for a scholarship to a writing class in Tuscany. I didn’t get it, but less than a month before the class, the person who got the scholarship couldn’t go. So, I said “YES!” The only catch—I didn’t have a passport. For a short while, it didn’t seem possible. But I told a friend that I was going to go if I had to swim across the ocean. I found a way to get my passport in time, and I made the trip!
How Do You Know You’ve Outgrown Your Current Situation?
On one end of the spectrum, you’re comfortable, but bored. On the other end, you’re in acute psychic pain.
It begins with a whisper and ends in a shout: “You. Must. Change!”
The only way to change your life is to change your self. And that’s not easy. It involves growing pains. It involves asking for, and getting, help and guidance.
So sometimes, you stay stuck.
Do I dare?
Feeling stuck is kind of like being a hermit crab, living in an old shell that no longer fits you. It’s tight and pinches.
You see a big, empty conch shell nearby, but you’re too afraid to brave the open water to claim it. You believe you cannot possibly make it. (But you can.)
Sometimes you can’t see what’s possible, and you don’t believe it’s even there.
So you carry the old shell around like the burden it’s become. You adapt and twist yourself into an imitation of someone who still fits in that place.
It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s uncomfortable, and it hurts for a reason: to push you to keep growing.
We dwell “in God’s waiting room” during natural pauses in life, moments of rest before expansion. But comfort can trap you into staying too long. When it’s time, you need to walk over to the door and open it.
Your bigger life is calling you.
If your life feels too constrained, your expanded self—the part of you bigger than your circumstances—actually wants you to stretch beyond where you are. It’s pulling you toward a bigger life for a reason.
What do you have to gain?
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
— Joseph Campbell