OUT FOR DELIVERY

There have been some intricate yet annoying crossovers in those muscle memory moments of my life that have been a little frustrating when I’m made to think of it. If you’re like me and spend a significant amount of time on a computer, there are some shortcuts you learned to maneuver your productivity a little more fluidly.

Command + A to select a whole body of text. Command + C to copy, Command + V to paste, or command + X to cut. Command + Z has become one of my new favorites. It serves as an undo option. I’ve had several moments where I messed up on something I was working on outside of my computer and my first instinct on those occasions was to command + Z. It’s usually this really quick thought and it only takes a second to come back to reality and find the line between what’s technologically possible versus what’s possible in real life but at that moment, that instant and fleetly thought provokes so much.

What if some of the features of convenience we are privileged with online could come to life if you will? If I could pick any feature of our modern technology and apply it to the in-person elements of my day-to-day life, it would be tracking technology. I’d put air tags on every intangible thing.

I’ve heard it referenced often, how happy we’d all be if we could get an estimated time of arrival for our blessings and it continues to ring true. There’s a level of convenience we’d add to the aspects of life that are the most difficult because we’re all problem solvers at heart— even if it is just for our own personal use.

Imagine being able to check to see when you’ll finally be rid of the emotional thing you’ve been talking out in therapy. Imagine being able to test to see if the trauma has fully dissipated. It’s frivolous thinking, I know, but as much as we know that it’s impossible to track those things in our lives in any definitive way, we sometimes live as if we should be able to but can’t. We live like not being able to tell when something good is going to happen is just a broken feature in our lives. The frustration we allow to set into our souls like seeds that bring forth hopelessness makes it seem like the thing we were expecting at a certain time was set to be delivered at that certain time but was delayed.

I think we were that way before the feature was actualized in our mail delivery system. I think that all of these features are derivative of our desire to always be in control and in the know. I think we forget that some things aren’t guaranteed, even with prayer and affirmations, hard work, and goodwill. I think we’ve gotten so used to the certainty of mail-ordered conveniences that we lose the patience necessary for the changes we want for our lives.

Much like half of our Amazon purchases, the moment it arrives, it loses the sensationalism it held before. That feeling lasts until the box is cracked open and we place our hands on our items. It’s almost like, now that it's ours, the luster is gone. We treat our blessings the same way because sometimes we get so fixated on what we’re after that we don’t even realize when the status changes to delivered. 

There’s nothing to reprimand in this flawed process of ours except how it translates mentally and emotionally. If there were no implications for our mental and emotional and even spiritual wellness anywhere on the conveyor belt of requests and deliverance, it wouldn’t matter much how fickle we’ve been with our needs and wants. But just as we’ve become acclimated with the instantaneous responses to our inquiries, our Instacarts, our two-day shipping, our TSA precheck, and other conveniences —in a way that makes us want to call our car keys when we can’t find them— we place the same desires on our intangible desires. And even though we can’t pop an air tag on the emotional healing, the success at work, or meeting the love of our lives, we still place expectations on those things as if we should be able to track them.

When we aren’t married by 30, when we don’t get the house by 35, when we aren’t making anywhere close to the salary that was meant to fund the lifestyle we said we wanted to have, we’re ready to cancel the order altogether.

What I learned about process is that our efforts directly relate to the outcome —especially as it pertains to prayer. I see people say all the time in those succinct and inspirational yet misguided social media posts that what’s for you can’t miss you but that’s not true. If you order an item and before the package arrives, you move and leave no forwarding address, do you think you’ll ever see that package? Not unless you run it down, stalk your old address to try to find it, or reorder it to your new address. Similarly, the choices we make can stand in the way of those things that are for us. How many of us talk about the kind of relationship we want, then when we meet someone who makes it feel possible, we sabotage it because though it seems good, we realize that we weren’t up for the task of living up to who we need to be to maintain it.

In all that we ask for, pray for, desire, or even work for, it’s necessary that we prepare ourselves for the answers. As far as process goes, sitting by the door waiting for it to show up doesn’t help— A watched pot never boils (even though that’s technically not true). The idea is to spend your waiting period in faith, doing the work it takes to become someone who will be a good caretaker of the thing you’re waiting for. That’s the kind of faith that activates.

If your blessings were out for delivery right now, would you be ready?

PRAYER

Lord, I’m impatient and I know it. I know that patience is a good thing but sometimes it feels like if I don’t keep my focus on the things I’m waiting for, I forget to check for them. But in that obsessive kind of waiting, I get anxious and frustrated and sometimes hopeless. I’m asking that you help me to wait in a productive way. Help me to find peace in the silence between request and deliverance. Help me to spend the waiting period in prayer, in hope, in peaceful anticipation of a move from you. I know that you’ll never leave a prayer request unread. I know that you respond even if requires that I wait, even if it means giving me what I need rather than what I want. I know you don’t just ignore me. Help me to remember that you hear me, that you heard me. Help me to put all of my trust in you and your timing. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

JOURNAL CHALLENGE

What are you waiting for? Make a checklist of the things you’re waiting for answers or solutions to. Keep it in a place where you can revisit and check them off as they happen. For the items that take longer, pray about how you can get ready as you wait.