Remember the storm I wrote about last week? The days without electricity, the phone mishap, the holiday weekend right in the middle of it all.

The problems got resolved. But then there was the cleanup.

The deadlines didn't move. The time I had to work toward them just got shorter. And I didn't want to miss the plans I already had with my daughters this summer.

This week I've felt the crunch. The instability. The stress of life catching up all at once. It's felt like someone pressed fast forward on my life, and what I'd really like to do is hit pause.

Here's what I keep coming back to: maybe the pause I'm looking for isn't a break from the waiting, it's in the waiting. I'm anticipating that God will give me room to breathe. I don't feel it yet. But I trust it's coming.

In the middle of it all is God's grace. We don't have to be perfect. We can stay in the messiness a little longer.

That's exactly what this week's prayer is about. My mentor sent it to me recently, and I want to share it with you today; not to explain it, but to let you sit with it the way I have.

Read it slowly. Notice what stands out to you.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
excerpted from Hearts on Fire

Life can sometimes feel like we've just pulled onto the autobahn and need to hit the gas. But God's work is slow, slow like the prayer above reminds us.

Don't confuse the pace of the secular world with the pace of the divine you're seeking.

As you move through this week, keep noticing where God is working, even in the waiting.

The Aligned Life is a community built on peace, love, joy, and commitment to family and self. Together we seek to live aligned with God’s purpose in everyday life.

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