The Quiet Challenge of Waiting

Taken at Kholo Botanical Gardens - I feel like I've been waiting as long as this seat has been slowly returning to the earth.

Right now our family is in a strange season; the season of waiting.

In January, Luke applied for a job in Norway, and has since gone through two interviews leaving us somewhere in the long, slow middle of the recruitment process. If you know anything about Norway, you might not be surprised to hear that the pace of recruitment seems to match the pace of life there: calm, measured, and decidedly unhurried.

Which is lovely in theory.

But when you are the one waiting, it feels a little different.

We don’t know if he has the job. We don’t know if we are moving. We don’t really know when we will know (they gave him a very loose timeframe but assured him that no news meant no decision).

And so we sit here in this curious in-between space.

Life is continuing on around us; school, work, volleyball games, dinners, the dogs demanding attention, but underneath it all sits this quiet uncertainty. What’s fascinating is how many everyday decisions suddenly become oddly complicated when the future is unclear.

Do I buy a new summer dress? What’s the point if we might be packing up our lives soon?

Do we plan a holiday? What will that mean if Luke goes to Norway?

Do we start planning things for next year? Or would that all need to change?

Individually, none of these decisions are particularly big. But when almost every choice hinges on an unknown outcome, you start to feel a little… frozen.

Not stressed, exactly.

On the surface we are going about life quite normally. We laugh, we plan dinners, we talk about school and work and weekend plans. But somewhere beneath it all sits this quiet awareness that something significant might be about to change.

And that lack of control is hard.

I think many of us like to believe we are adaptable. That we can handle whatever comes our way. And generally that’s true. But there is something uniquely uncomfortable about the space before you know what is coming.

It’s not the challenge itself.

It’s the uncertainty.

Humans are wired to seek clarity. Our brains like a plan. Even if the plan is difficult, at least it gives us somewhere to stand.

Waiting, on the other hand, leaves us hovering.

But maybe there is something important in this space too.

Waiting asks us to sit with uncertainty rather than solve it. It invites patience in a world that doesn’t practise patience very often. It reminds us that not everything is within our control - no matter how organised, proactive, or strategic we might be.

And perhaps that is part of the lesson.

For now, life continues as it always does: school lunches packed, workdays full, the dogs barking at the postman.

And somewhere in Norway, someone is probably reviewing applications at a beautifully calm Scandinavian pace.

So we wait.

And trust that eventually, the next chapter will reveal itself.

Med kjærlighet og vennlighet (with love and kindness),

Alicia