Waiting is hard. Especially in today’s world, gosh it’s just so hard. In a world where we get everything so instantaneously, where, the next 2-3 steps is known and almost predictable (for better or worse), to live in this season of waiting in what feels like an endless time is hard. Heck, I even wrote a whole series on waiting on God a couple of years back just as I was waiting for a couple of things to come through. Those were truly hard, “lost” moments for me.
And yet, once again here I find myself waiting once again. This time around, I am waiting for news to move to get our visa to Kangaroo Land (KL), a journey which I started more than 2 years ago, when I submitted all my documents for employment skill verification and so on. 2 years have passed, and we are still waiting.
I am worried. I am worried and anxious because I feel that time is slowly ticking ; and that window to move is slowly closing on me. After spending quite a lot of money and time and resources on it, I am still not sure what the future holds.
The future for me looks uncertain in some ways. Yes, I have a good job, yes I have a stable income, and a good family, healthy kids, etc – but my one “last dance” moment is still up in the air. Kangaroo Land is important for our family ; wifey mentions and often shares her desires to move, and I can’t blame her given how we are raising our children. We are swimming against the tide here at times, and it’s hard to grow and to be the parent you want to be in an environment in which values go against our own parenting values. It’s definitely hard.
Then there are my 3 kids – our pride and joy whom we want to give a better life – a life not determined so much by letter grades and assessment books, but a life that helps to flourish creativity, independence and most importantly joy. Can the red dot offer all this? I honestly don’t know – personally after living here for more than 8 years now, when it comes to parenting and raising children, I do find this place wanting in certain areas.
Then there’s me. Yes me. What do I want out of this move and why do I want to move? Well, to me, it’s about helping me see my kids grow, being in an environment that does not over-stress on productivity and making it to the top with as little time as possible. Those are not values I believe in, and I have never believed in. I have always believed in hard work, in putting your dues (a story for another day) and giving your best at work and letting God do the rest. That’s how I have survived the corporate world and my pressure cooker environment for so long. I always gave my best and I managed my expectations at work well. Only in those rare occasions did I ever bicker about missing promotions etc (I could only recall 2-3 times in my entire 15 year working career). So a place like KL (not that KL) helps me meet my expectations as I approach then 2nd half of my life.
And so for all these dreams to realise, I must wait. Wait for how long, I do not know, but wait I must. Trust, faith, hope is being put to the test every moment during these last few months and especially in the last few weeks. To just persevere, to stay steadfast, to not be discouraged because of difficulty, delay or defeat, it’s a tall order for me personally.
I must stay the course and be focused on Him, especially during this season. As I close off this reflection, there is one thing though I would like to reflect, and perhaps be reminded of – that God, especially in my own life, has often worked his wonders when I least expected things to happen.
I have written extensively about how I got my first job, how I moved down to the red dot, how we welcomed our child. All these stories and testimonies have one thing in common – they all unexpectedly happened when I least expected them to happen. Even the start to KL (not that KL), that whole journey, happened because of some random message on LinkedIn which triggered the whole chain of events. While that opportunity did not materialise, it sure did trigger me to start the whole moving down to KL journey. That was over 2 years ago.
Was it God’s prompting? I will never know, and to some degree, I don’t need to know. What I do need to know is, and just like everything I have done before in the past, is to just respond to these prompting and cooperate with Him by responding to these opportunities or tasks, no matter how difficult or cumbersome they are.
Perhaps God will do His wonders, actually its not a “perhaps”, God will surely do his wonders (read Confidence), I just need to be patient in this season of waiting.
