Learning the patience of a candle.

The morning pages were filled with anxiety:

What does the future hold? . . .  What’s my purpose in life? . . . Is there such a thing? . . . If so, why is it so hard to figure out? Couldn’t there be signs directing each of us to our particular purpose?. . . Wouldn’t trumpets blowing help us know when we reached our individual purpose?

After my three-page rant, I felt depleted and exhausted. Rather than rush off into my day, I decided to sit and just be.

I used the candle in front of me to focus and calm my thoughts.  The flame danced with the breeze in the room, and I found myself wondering who invented the first candle? I get the whole wick thing and how the fire burns its way down, but who thought of slowing the process down by dipping the wick in wax? To keep the fire from burning the wick too quickly, producing a sudden and dramatic flash of light, someone wise devised a way to slow the burning so the candle would last.

Soon it became clear to me that there was a lesson whispering to me through my candle reflections. Like the wick, each of us has been given a wonderful light to shine into the world. To bring that light into the world is a noble and wonderful purpose, but maybe someone wiser than we knew to slow things down so the fire would burn longer. Maybe, like the wax, our lives are surrounded with a timing that may not be ours but serves an important purpose.

I don’t know, but such thoughts gave me reason for hope . . . and patience.