For those of you not familiar with the book, The Wait is a powerful practice for finding the love of your life and the life you love. Some of us might be in-denial of the fact that in reality we all crave love. It's a basic human need, but sometimes we desperately crave love so bad we'll get in bad relationships, stay with people who use and abuse us and we might not even know it because we are blinded by the want of wanting love.
Going through a break up at the time my mother actually gave this book to me as a gift for my birthday and it couldn't have been a better time. Each page I read the more I related to the material. For a VERY long time God had been calling me to walk this journey and ignored it, and mainly because I didn't want to seem like the odd man out, or I didn't want my boyfriend to leave me etc.
I could literally go on and on about all the feelings and emotions I had at the time, but I overcame it and I'm still a work in progress everyday. I don't just want to be a voice for young single Christian women, but for all women period. We live in a time where everything is instant and we fall victim to instant gratification because mainly that's what we're use to, and our weakness then becomes patience.
It seems today a lot of women are comfortable with settling for whatever because their lonely, or they sleep with someone because they act based upon temporary emotions and end up regretting what they did and that feeling of emptiness returns. It returns because the void was filled for a moment which is called instant gratification. You instantly feel good until you don't.
Every one's reason for picking up the book is different, and I can only speak based upon my own experience. This book has helped me realize my dating patterns/behavior, take a deep look at myself and reflect. It helped me realized I didn't respect and love myself the way I should because of the situations I put myself in and continued not to learn from them.
Most importantly it showed me forgiving those that have hurt you can help the healing process to becoming your best self and how to date the way God desires us to. Despite what the reality shows say, despite what all these ratchet hoes say and post on Instagram; Godly dating DOES EXIST along with women with values, morals and standards, and not all men are Jerks.
25 Things The Wait taught me and helped me realize
1. The Wait is a decision to get my mind right figure out who I want to be, what I want out of life and use my time and energy to become the best version of myself.
2. To wait is to delay temptation for instant gratification and relationships in order to get what you really want in life and become the person you truly want to be.
3. The problem is that..... what we should do is not what we want to do.
4. God won't leave you guessing. He will send you a sign that it's time to slow down , quite your mind and work on yourself while he labors on your behalf, but it's up to you to read the signs.
5. Change is always difficult, which is why people so often retreat into the familiar even when the familiar is awful and depressing.
6. When we're focused primarily on satisfying our immediate desires, we're preventing ourselves from being the best people we can be. One of the key elements of being the best people we can be is to be the healthiest person we can be. The short-term results of instant gratification might be fun but in the long term we often damage our health and ourselves. Not to mention we become like addicts chasing the next high.
7. The wait reminds us that while we have the power of choice much of what happens in our life is still subject to God's control.
8. Dating is like putting on your church clothes, and if you don't ever let someone know you're less than perfect side before you get married you can spend your entire life wearing those clothes afraid to be yourself.
9. The desire to wait is different from the ability to wait and it's a lot easier to remain celibate and delay gratification if you know you're doing it because it brings concrete benefits.
10. Every time you give yourself to someone before marriage you give them your power.
11. It's up to us to decide if we want to humble ourselves and submit to his plan even if it seems to lead us away from what we want the most.
12. As long as you have faith God will ensure you will find true happiness with someone who brings out the best in you.
13. Don't be afraid to lose him, because if a man truly loves you, he's not going anywhere.
14. As a woman it's your responsibility to work on developing the fullness of who God created you to be before you give yourself to your husband. Until you do that you won't be ready to find and keep that perfect partner. God not man completes you.
15. The process of finding your husband isn't really about finding your husband but about finding yourself as a woman. One virtual thing to remember who you think you should end up with is rarely who you end up with.
16. Waiting is an act of power it's declaring that you know and accept yourself, love yourself and trust God.
17. We fall in love with an idea of who we want someone to be, but we don't allow time and space for them to show us who they are. People will eventually reveal themselves if you allow them to.
18. Unconditional love means accepting someone for who they are now, not who you hope they will be one day.
19. You need to know the person God is bringing to you loves him first.
20. The Wait is about being at peace with who you were, who you are and who you're becoming.
21. Pain doesn't just heal without attention. It waits beneath the surface and poisons everything in our lives. The solution is to reject the quick fix of a drink or a one nighter that temporarily dulls the pain.
22. Face the reasons why you're in pain.
23. If God means for you to be with someone, he will bring you together though the obstacles seem insurmountable.
24. Heal the past: Reaching out to the people who have hurt you and making peace with them. It's difficult but it's the most effective way to forgive.
25. Forgiveness is power. By forgiving others for their treatment of you, you free yourself from anger, regret or guilt. You take back your power by taking the high ground. (God's Ground)
2 comments:
13. is interesting to me. So i would like a little more elaboration on this matter. So lets say a man truly loves you. He really wants a life with you, he really puts forth effort, he verbalizes as well as commits actions that accurately dictates his feelings and after all the waiting he still gets no real results. Are you saying that he doesn't really feel that way because he grew tired of the indecisive flow of the relation? Or are there other factors involved?
coming from a woman I don't believe 13 is conveying that message. I take it more so as a woman we might be dating a guy and he could be everything we've ever wanted, but if we are practicing being celibate we might be afraid to tell the person and mainly because we think he might leave and go on to something else. Because in reality men have needs and when they hear that they may run the other way, but the man who really wants you in their life long term will respect your choice and know your boundaries and accept that's your decision an stand by your stand while also remaining faithful.
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