2012 is the year!!!! Okay. For what? For who? I heard this same phrase for 2011 and 2010 and 2009 and . . . and you know what? I believe everyone was (and are) right, because each year is the year for something for someone, somewhere. Of course each of us would like for it to be our year for something special, especially if we’ve been waiting for something to happen for a long time. And when I say “waiting” it’s not to say we’ve been doing nothing and waiting passively for that unique event to occur.
For many of these special dreams and desires, we have to be doing something to prepare for them. We have to be ever learning, creating, changing, investigating, deleting and completing and maybe a host of other things to move us in the direction we desire to go. Can you say “Preparation”? Nevertheless, try as we might, we cannot control every single thing in our lives to make “it” happen when we want “it” to happen. Yes some things take time, and some things take MORE time. Ugh!! How much time? For me, in my opinion, some things are taking just too much time, but try as I might, and believe me I have tried, I cannot make “it” happen. But this is the normal mentality for normally impatient people. LOL!
Most of my efforts have landed me in situations which have taken more time to recover from. So you have to be careful if you ask me “what are you doing to make 'this' happen for yourself?” It’s not a very good question to ask, so don’t. J Anyhoooo, recently I’ve been running into a similar theme through different writers and also just my own method of studying, and it has been this phrase, “My time has not yet come.” It takes a pretty humble person, someone who knows him or herself, someone who understands his or her purpose, someone who knows why he or she is where he or she is, to say something like that.
Just recently my best friend and I have been having some great conversations and in one of them she said (and I'm paraphrasing) “as much as I want to do 'this', and as long as I’ve been waiting for what I can feel and know is coming soon, I know I’m not yet ready. I still have much learning and changing to do.” I truly admire her because she is honest and not afraid to say “I’m not ready” and therefore “it’s not time yet”. Me on the other hand, most of my life I’ve been a little more cocky. LOL!! Why? Because of fear. Fear that the wheel will not turn around again to bring me that opportunity, so I feel I have to take it while it is there. Strike while the iron is hot, even if I don’t know what I’m doing. I can learn along the way. J In band we call it "sight reading". Sometimes this has worked, but many times it was not the best thing to do. I can admit I was not very humble because people who live in fear are not humble.
Humble people know and respect their limitations and acknowledge that they need help, and they are not afraid to ask for help. Those of us who fear missing what could be our dream job or the moment-of-our-life-which-may-never-pass-this-way-again, we may know our limitations and know we need help, but we also may not respect our weaknesses and ask for help. Somewhere along the way we’ve been taught and told that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. We’ve also been told that “you don’t want to wait too long, for some things in life will only come around once, and most things will not wait forever.” Can you say “tick-tock bio clock”? We’ve been taught to fear that the future may NOT hold anything good and positive for us, so we have to make the future happen NOW! We don’t live in the present, but we live ever making the future our now reality. But now is all we ever have anyway, so what the heck?
Like Bart and Lisa asked repetitively with impatience in the car to Homer in one of the "Simpsons" episodes, “Are we there yet?” Is it time yet? Are you ready? Which scenario would be best: A) To be ready before the time and to be kept waiting. B) To not be ready when the time arrives.? And of course there is a third and fourth scenario: C) To not be ready and it’s not yet time. D) To be ready on/in time. Of course D would be the ideal, but I’m more interested in the first two scenarios. Some of us know ourselves well and others of us only think we know ourselves.
I don’t know who penned the lyrics to this song but I love it. It says “Put me in coach, I’m ready to play today. Look at me, I could be centerfield.” LOL!! Maybe that athlete is ready to play and the coach needs to give him a chance or maybe the coach knows him better than he knows himself and that’s why he continues to sit on the bench, or pitching balls in the dugout. Either way, his mentality is one of “I’m ready”, and I believe to think one is ready is half the battle even if we are not ready.
As life continues to reveal to us what we lack on our way to becoming “ready”, our ready mentality is what can keep us from falling backwards into discouragement and depression as time continues to pass us by. Or it could cause us to become closed-minded to learning new things which would aid our much needed continued preparation. The problem is we cannot SEE what’s missing for maybe we don’t know what’s all involved and needed to do what we want to do, and go where we want to go.
Also, if there are other players (no pun intended, but it is apropos) involved, maybe they are not ready and therefore we cannot move forward until all the legs have been nailed to their chair or table (or coffin. LOL!! Just a little humor.), until all the wheels have been mounted on the bus, until all the appliances have been installed in the house. You see what I’m saying I’m sure. Is it time yet? Are they ready? Are WE ready? Hmmmmm.
In different places in the Bible, in the Gospels, we find verses which quote Jesus as saying “My time (hour to act) has not yet come.” [John 2:4b] (Amplified Bible) In this particular passage, they were at a wedding and the wine ran out. Mary, the mother of Jesus told Him about it and He had to lovingly tell her that she could not tell Him what to do. He could not do what people wanted Him to do just because they wanted Him to do it. There’s a time and a place for everything and it is important that we know our times and seasons so we will be in the right place at the right time, with the right people.
The wisest man King Solomon penned these words, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die . . .” [Ecclesiastes 3:1-2a] (Amplified Bible) In another place Jesus responded to His biological brothers that His time had not yet come for they were pressuring Him to go to a feast and reveal Himself and His powers to the public. Has that ever happened to you? Peer pressure to do something before you are ready to do it? Before your time?
As I was walking to the store one evening I grabbed the branch of a tree and it was rubbery and bendable. It did not snap, crackle or pop. Yet the season is the mid-winter and I thought to myself “should not all the sap in the trees descend into the ground for the winter, rendering the branches more likely to break rather than bend and bounce back?” I continued to ponder times and seasons versus circumstances and conditions. Nature knows what time it is I’m sure, but for several years now our winters have sometime seem like spring and summer, and I wonder if nature gets confused and responds to “the conditions” (environment) rather than the calendar by which we are informed of what season it should be. Of course nature doesn’t take her cues from humans, but the other way around. But if nature continues to become unpredictable, how will we know what time and season we really are in? J
“. . . a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. . .” [Ecclesiastes 3:2b-3a] (Amplified Bible) 2012 is the year for all of us in some way or another. Maybe what we expect and desire will happen for us this year and maybe it will not. But I’m sure that either way, at the end of this year we will be closer to our goal(s) than we were last year and than we are right now. J A good question to honestly ask ourselves is “am I ready?” for whatever it is I’m aiming and waiting for. And even if we think we are and KNOW we are, what can we do in the mean time while we wait for all the other players to get in place, for we do not exist in this life alone, and we do nothing by ourselves. I know I’m not ready to be left alone in a pool of water for I cannot swim, yet. But maybe this year it will be my time to learn. What about you? What is it time for you to do? What ARE you ready to do while you wait for that great desire, that great opportunity to present itself to you? It IS time for something, and we are ready for something. Always.
Peace.
