Episode 278 Transcript
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You are listening to episode 278 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best mom you were created by God to be. If you wanna bring more balance, more joy, and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic Mom Danielle Thienel.
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Thienel, and I'm so grateful you've chosen to spend this time with me today. Have you ever found yourself in a [00:01:00] season of waiting? A time when you've prayed and prayed, but the answer seems distant or unclear. Maybe you're waiting for healing in your body, restoration in a relationship, clarity about a decision, which by the way, I have lots of podcasts about that, or a breakthrough in your family if so, then today's episode is especially for you.
But if you said that you haven't found yourself in a season of waiting, maybe you will one day and then I'm glad you are here as well listening to this episode because waiting is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of our faith journey.
We live in a culture of instant gratification where we can microwave our meals, stream our entertainment on demand. I've been known to do that a night or two. How about these packages that we can have delivered the same day and even, I literally just ordered something for my mom today. [00:02:00] I could have had it within the hour.
Wow. But God's timeline, it often looks very different from our own, doesn't it? And I've experienced this personally. I'm actually in the midst of it right now. Maybe by the time this episode comes, I'll have an answer just waiting for the answer to where my son will be going off to college, right?
Praying consistently for guidance about a major life decision, which I have on his behalf. It's still, I would say it's difficult, right? That expanding. Maintaining our like life and our schedule, and then have our mind be thinking about something that has us feeling like life can be on hold, right?
[00:03:00] Sometimes I do feel like I'm sending my prayers into a little bit of a void, even though what I tell myself and sometimes that I preach to my clients, but don't, do, a total stellar job myself is that, he tells us that when you ask, you will receive. And I do find myself like praying the same prayer over and over again.
But I'm just offering you this and being a little vulnerable about it, knowing that you might be finding yourself doing the same thing, right? And we're looking for a clear sign. We want a definitive answer, but instead, sometimes we are met with that silence. And so during that waiting period. As right now, I wrestle with impatience and doubt, and I'm a little frustrated some at my son, some not getting my prayers answered on my timeline right.
But now I, [00:04:00] what I'm really where this episode stems from is I'm switching my perspective to see how rich this waiting season is. There's so much growth happening on my end because of these waiting circumstances, and so I just am looking for that, not because of the waiting. But despite it.
That's what I want to talk to you about today. Not just about how you should endure waiting periods, but how you can truly thrive within them. I am still thriving within my waiting period, and it's not technically mine, right? It's actually my son's. But yeah, it's I'll just say it's collectively our family's waiting period.
But I'm still trying to find purpose and peace in the meantime as I wait for those prayers to be answered. And that's what I want [00:05:00] you to do as well. 'cause as soon as my mind goes to the not knowing and feeling like the uncertainty of the unknown. I have been saying I also right now can look at this is happening and this special thing is going on, and it brings me back to creating some purpose and peace in the meantime.
So let's just first have you see that when we're in a season of waiting, that it's just, it's easy to view it like only or merely as an obstacle. Something to get through, and we're trying to get through it as quickly as possible so that we can move on to the real thing or whatever we will need to happen after we find out the answer.
But scripture teaches us that waiting in itself has a profound purpose. Throughout the Bible, [00:06:00] we see that God's people are in seasons of waiting. So for instance, Abraham waited decades for the promised son. Joseph waited years in prison before his elevation. The Israelites waited 40 years in the wilderness before entering the promised land.
David waited years before his anointing and his coronation, and even Jesus waited 30 years before he began his public ministry. These stories reveal to us that waiting isn't a divine oversight or a heavenly holding pattern, it's an intentional part of God's plan for us, for our growth. In Isaiah 40:31 we are reminded that those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. So what [00:07:00] does our faith and some of these examples I've given teach us about the purpose of waiting first, waiting cultivates patient. And that fruit of the spirit doesn't grow when we have comfortable conditions, but it happens when we have delayed fulfillment.
Even though I will say that when I was doing my rosary this morning and you, I get to the decade where it. This is the one for patience. I'm always like, oh good. Let me just do these 10 Hail Marys so I can have more patience. But patience isn't just about enduring the time, right? It is about developing a deeper trust in God's timing and goodness, and that timing I call divine time.
But we do want, if there's something right now that you have, you're waiting on an answer through [00:08:00] prayers, or if you haven't seen a change yet, or you just feel like it's just been silence, can you now reframe it to see that you are developing a deeper trust in God's timing? Okay. I also want to bring up that waiting develops character.
I know, like in my instance right now, my brain wants to say, okay, I don't want any more character, or I'm done, or I like my character the way it is, something like that. But there is more obviously, that God has in store for me to develop, which is why I have this current waiting period. So Romans five, three, and four tells us.
Suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character. Hope that in the waiting that parts of our characters that need refining are revealed and our tendency towards control are [00:09:00] struggle with trust, our attachment to our own timelines. As these are like exposed to us, we have the opportunity to then surrender them and allow God to transform us through them.
And there's an important distinction that I want to highlight here, and that is the difference between passive and active waiting. Now in earlier podcast episodes, I have addressed what we call passive and active action. And so I wanna use the correlation here. Passive waiting is like when we're sitting in a doctor's office, we maybe mindlessly scroll through our phone until our name is called, right?
We're just passing time, we're marking the minutes. We're disengaged from the present moment. Now, active waiting, on the other hand, is purposeful and engaged. So think of a pregnant mother. You're not just passing [00:10:00] time until delivery. You are preparing a nursery. You're learning about childbirth.
You're taking care of your health, you're connecting with your baby. You're fully present and purposeful in your waiting season, knowing that, yes, ultimately it's about the birth and having the baby, but there are beautiful things and joy and moments that you don't wanna miss. Or challenges through that pregnancy that are there to to serve like a greater purpose that God has for you.
And it's happening in the waiting season. And God is calling us to be an active waiter, to be fully present, to be engaged and purposeful in our seasons of waiting. So let's talk about how we can do that. Let's get a couple tips and strategies to see, especially if you're right now, think about what you've prayed for that hasn't been [00:11:00] answered yet, and you are in the waiting season for how do you do it?
How do you wait? Could probably make that also be the title and episode of this podcast because that's what, when I am met in my coaching practice with people who want to know how can we wait better? How can again, how can we have more patience? Okay. And this is how we make this in-between time, more meaningful rather than just enduring and getting through it first.
We continue to pray. Okay. There can be a temptation when prayers seem that they're unanswered, that we either give up, praying altogether, or to pray with a kind of like detached going through the motions approach. And even as I'm saying this, I feel like a little spirit moving me on the inside and I'm thinking that this is something that, that I definitely have to pay attention to myself. [00:12:00] I think that I've been a little bit detached from my specific prayer that I'm thinking about now, and I have been going through the motions. I'm just going to, I'm like fully admitting that in real time right now. But active will mean that I need to stay engaged or reengage with it and God even and especially when we want to do this. When we actually get a response, and maybe that response isn't what we expected or had been hoping for or wanting. So this might mean how you're gonna change up, how you pray. Maybe you've been praying for the same thing in the same way for months or years. Perhaps it's time to try a different approach.
So instead of only asking for what your desired income, try asking the Lord, what are you doing in this waiting season? Show me. Reveal. Uncover my eyes. What do you want me to learn? [00:13:00] How can I grow closer to you through this? So notice how I'm taking away the attachment to the end outcome, and you're actually putting it in a way that's more divine, saying that you're having me wait for a reason.
It's actually this that I'm hoping that you'll reveal to me. I also strongly recommend journaling. During your waiting seasons, there's something just powerful about documenting your prayers, your questions, your struggles, the small ways God's already showing up for you day by day. Because not only does it help you process your emotions like in the present, but it creates a record that you can look back on to see God's faithfulness over time.
I love looking at some of my old journals or notebooks or even gratitude journals. So good. When you look back, there was a workbook I found recently that I had actually filled out and it was pretty neat to see some of the answers. At first I was like, oh no, what did I say? But it was [00:14:00] actually, some of it was humorous, to be honest with you.
And the other was like, oh wow, look what I was worrying about. That turned out totally fine that I never had to really stress over. So I like documenting it. Another powerful practice is finding the lessons in the waiting. Ask yourself, what am I learning about God through this? What am I learning about myself?
What skills, perspectives of my developing that I might not have gained any other way? So in my own waiting journey, I realize. I'm realizing again as I'm talking, that I am holding onto my plans a little bit more tightly than I now want to go forward. I'm recognizing my tendency to rush ahead. It's so interesting myself of last year when we began touring colleges for my son.
If I knew that this time the next year, I still wouldn't know. My past self [00:15:00] probably would've done definitely had a little bit of a pity party, but here I am a year later, and then there's a part of me that is just wants to be like, yeah, and you could probably wait another month or two and you're gonna be just fine.
But the lessons that you learn at this time, I think that they will serve you far beyond that specific waiting season. I love that. I'm sure I'm gonna have to wait for something else and so that I'm, I will able to call, recall and remember more easily having gone through this waiting season that I'm in now.
Another way you can help yourself in the waiting season and just wait. Is what we're calling it is to serve others, right? It's a powerful way to take the self-focus off and to help develop you during waiting periods. So when we're intensely focused on our own unmet desires or [00:16:00] unanswered prayers, our world can shrink to the size right of our waiting.
So reach out to serve others, whether through just just simply being attentive to others around us and picking up on what their needs may be. This expands our perspective. It reminds us how God works through us even in this waiting period in general. So for instance, with my business, when I feel stuck on something, whether it's like an idea or maybe something didn't turn out the way I would wanna be, I.
I can feel how everything starts to shrink and how my brain starts to look at the why those things are negative. But I have trained myself in those moments when I'm feeling stagnant or sad or disappointed about something. And I have trained myself like, [00:17:00] oh, okay. The way I don't want to say the way out of it, but a really helpful next step is to stop, pause, close my eyes.
Think of a mom out there who is suffering in from some form or fashion, and then ask myself, how can I help her? What would I need to do to connect with her to let her know that I'm available to help? And look how me turning that time. That may seem heavy or long or just as like self-focused into serving someone else.
And that always a hundred percent of the time works to help move things along. So when we're talking about having to wait and. Have patience and build resilience in these kind of like long waiting seasons [00:18:00] that we might find ourselves in. I want to offer you that one way we can help ourselves is to manage our emotions knowing that.
It's when we wait, it's emotional territory that we're stepping into, right? No matter how spiritually mature we are, when we have extended periods of waiting, it can trigger things like disappointment and doubt and frustration, even anger, and how we manage these difficult emotions. Without suppressing them, resisting them, or being controlled by them.
This is what I want to offer, that we, what we can do, we want to acknowledge, right? We want to acknowledge when we are feeling sad and disappointed, but we want to do that without losing hope. There's a false kind of spirituality that suggests that if you're [00:19:00] a good Christian, like you can't feel disappointed when God's timing differs from your own.
But you are human with a human brain, and part of our human experience is sadness, disappointment, frustration. Yes. Even anger. And so you wanna give yourself grace and self-compassion to tell yourself, to be able to feel those things and not push them away, right? God he already knows your heart anyway.
He's not threatened by your honest emotions. In fact, bringing those into your relationship with him, like talking to him about it, even if you're like, I'm mad about waiting. I don't wanna wait anymore. Like we, we call this little like emotional childhood when we just we could even self pity ourselves for just like a hot minute.
Not much longer. But really what I'm trying to get here is the key is to [00:20:00] acknowledge our negative feelings without camping out there. Like when, what? We will actually move through them if you don't resist them. And I want you to feel it fully. And when you do, that's when you're, it's more easily towards pivoting, toward more towards hope.
Getting ourselves back there. It's not that you should feel hopeful all the time. I find it helpful to say. God, I'm really disappointed that whatever x, Y, Z hasn't happened yet. I thought by now we would have, and again, fill in the blank, you can say, I feel sad, I feel frustrated. I feel worried about this, and then you followed up.
But I still trust. I trust that you're good. I trust that you love me, and that your timing and timing will be perfect even if I don't understand it, [00:21:00] even if afterwards it remains a mystery to. Doubt is another common emotion in waiting seasons. When prayers go unanswered for long periods, we begin to question, is God listening to me?
Does he care? Is he even there? And again, these thoughts don't make you like, not as good or as holy as the next person. They just make you human. So the remedy for doubt, it's not to ignore it or shame yourself, it is to bring your doubts into the light, right through honest prayer, through a supportive friend recognizing that you are still anchored in those truths that you have about your faith and.
Reminding yourself of God's faithfulness in the past that can help too, go back in the past to where he was faithful, or you had a long [00:22:00] waiting period and things turned out fine. Okay. I want you to find joy in the meantime. That is something I really wanna underscore for this episode. When we are in a waiting period when we're intensely focused on what we're waiting for, it's easy to miss the gifts of the present moment.
So is that something that's happening to you now? Are you falling into that trap of thinking I'll be happy when it finally happens? Are we putting our joy on hold until our prayers are answered? Let's just check ourselves on that. Okay. Let's look at what signs that your answer is coming maybe in a different form than you are wanting it to come in, right?
Because sometimes the most profound answers to prayer don't even look anything like we expected.
Instead of a clear yes or [00:23:00] no, we might just restructure the way that we are looking at this answer that we're holding on so tightly. And how do you recognize this? How do you discern if you're being redirected somewhere? You just pay attention. To those messages. We might have to get still, we have to get quiet.
Do are you keep, do, are you keep encountering like a same thought? Are you have a same feeling? Is there a same scripture that keeps coming up from you? Are you hearing similar advice maybe from different people? Are you feeling drawn? To a particular idea. Yeah, that, that pattern may be significant.
He, god often speaks to us through repetition to help us notice what we might otherwise [00:24:00] miss. And I just want you to be able to be open and willing to question what your original kind of ask was. Sometimes we pray for a solution within our own human limited constraints of imagination. We'll ask something like, should I take job A or B?
Right when maybe God's leading us to start our own business. Maybe we will ask to heal a relationship or help us let it go when maybe God is guiding us toward a completely new way of relating that we to this person that we haven't even considered before. And when we are perhaps wanting to be open to that signs that our answer to prayers are coming in a different form than we thought.
We want to notice what actually brings us peace. When we're [00:25:00] discerning God's direction, his peace often acts like a, an umpire signaling yes or no to different options. But if you feel a deep settled peace about a certain path that you hadn't initially considered, that may God's redirection because one thing I do know. Is, that's when I get this question, how do you know if it's coming for God or not? My answer is it will feel peaceful. I. So finding peace with unexpected answers, it does require a little bit of surrender, a little bit of letting go to our attachment of how we thought God would respond, and it just means opening ourselves, saying, God, I trust that your ways are higher than my ways, and your thoughts are higher than my thoughts as Isaiah 55 reminds us.
I say, help me recognize and receive your answer, even if it comes in a [00:26:00] package that I wasn't expecting. I know this isn't easy, and I just, again, trying to. Give you a little bit more peace of mind when our brain really sees a time of waiting for answers to our prayers. That is, that feels really hard to us.
So I just wanna end today. I'm gonna offer a prayer for those who are listening and are in waiting seasons. And again, and if you're not, then maybe you'll remember this episode and you'll be able to come back and listen to it again. If you would, I would like to pray on your behalf. Heavenly Father.
For each person listening who is in a season of waiting, I pray for strength and peace that surpasses understanding. Lord, you see the desires of their hearts, the [00:27:00] prayers they've prayed, and the tears they've shed in these waiting moments, help them sense your presence more deeply than ever before. Give them wisdom to wait actively, rather than passively to find purpose in this season and to grow in ways they couldn't have otherwise.
Help them manage difficult emotions with honesty and hope and open their eyes to recognize your answers even when they come in unexpected forms. But above all, Lord deepen their trust in your perfect timing and your good plans for their lives. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, before we close. I'd also like to offer you for those in my suggestion of writing things down a journaling prompt.
I want to help you reflect on your own waiting season. So take some time this week to write about this question. What [00:28:00] might God be developing in me through this waiting that couldn't be developed any other way? Okay, let me, I'm gonna repeat that. Okay. Maybe this week take some time to write down about this question.
What might God be developing in me through this waiting that couldn't be developed any other way? I just, I love this. I'm going to do this myself, this waiting period that I'm in. 'cause really that question just opens to show you like that there is purpose in this waiting period, whatever you're in, that God has a purpose for it.
Or else he would've picked a different way, but he didn't. Okay, everyone, that's what I have for you this week. Thank you for joining me. I also, you might know someone else who's in a waiting season right [00:29:00] now has a little anxiousness about it or thinking that they're not hearing prayers, so maybe you want to forward this episode link onto them.
Okay. Remember, I'm here walking this talk alongside you trying to figure out how to create as much peace and peace of mind in my life as possible, and I wish that for all of you as well. Okay, everyone. Until next time, may peace be with you always. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
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Whether you need one-on-one guidance to get there, prefer a group coaching program with like-minded women or a self-study course I've got you covered. Explore my private one-on-one packages. Join my Busy to Balanced group life coaching program, or delve into my signature course Divine Time. To find out which path is right for you, let's meet and see what's the best fit.
Schedule a free call with at daniellethienel.com or send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram @daniellethienelcoaching. And also don't forget to get your copy of my book, the Cyclone Mom Method, How To Call On Your God-Given Power To Remain Calm, In Control, and Confident as a Busy Mom. Dive into the digital and bonus audio version when you go to [00:31:00] book.daniellethienel.com/new-book.
You'll find all the details in the show notes too. Until next time, peace be with you always.
