BY CATHERINE JACKSON

When I packed up my bags and jumped on a plane to spend four months across the ocean, I had two very specific goals in mind:

Learn to love red wine

Learn to love coffee.

It felt right to have the two most important goals on my trip revolve around the culture in which I would be living for four months. I mean, how could I possibly have expected to live in Scotland, where the sun sets at 3pm in the winter and the wind is always swirling, without drinking the world’s quintessential hot beverage? And how could I have vacationed in wine country and turned down bottles of the world’s best Pinot Noir?

For someone who doesn’t have the best track-record with achieving goals, miraculously, by the time we were whisked out of Edinburgh because of the pandemic, I had fallen in love with both coffee and red wine. Check and check.

But it wasn’t a quick process of falling in love with coffee and wine. It took time and perseverance. It took many, many sips where I found myself scrunching up my face because people really drink this stuff and like it?! It took drinking many lattes that were more milk, sugar, and syrup than they were coffee. It took ordering the sweetest Pinot Noir on every dinner menu, hoping that this time would be the time I could actually find some enjoyment in the glass.

Then, one morning, when I was exhausted and needed some caffeine, I drank a cup of black coffee. And I enjoyed it. And when my dad offered me a glass of Cabernet one night — instead of my usual Pinot — I shrugged and took a sip. And I liked it. All of the time I had spent training my taste buds to savor coffee and red wine had actually worked.

It may seem silly, these goals I set for myself before going abroad. For all the challenge and excitement and adventure that abroad experiences have a reputation of bringing…these are the things on which I chose to focus? But I will tell you that every morning when I sip my coffee (black, I might add) or every time I taste Pinot Noir dancing across my tongue, I think of Scotland and I think of achieved goals and I think of patience.

Right before I got to Scotland, the word patience started making appearance after appearance on the pages of my brand-spanking-new 2020 journal, not by coincidence, in the journal I had picked out specifically because of how thick it was.

“I think I want this fat journal next,” I told my mom in the store.

“Okay,” she said, bracing herself, knowing she was about to get a long-winded explanation for why I needed this specific journal.

“I want to slow down. Every journal before this, I have rushed to fill up, so I can move onto the next one. I guess I always feel a little pride in saying ‘I filled up this journal in only four months.’ If I get a fat journal, I have no choice but to be patient because I know it will take longer to fill up than normal.”

She smiled, grabbed the fat journal from my hands, and said, “My treat.”

Just a few days later, I wrote my first prayer of the year in that brand-new, extra thick journal, and it included these words:

Lord, thank You that You are confirming in me what I feel You’ve been putting on my heart. Patience and longevity and sowing now for the future and for eternity…I pray You help me establish deep roots and dig deeper wells, with the outcome and purpose in mind, but not rushing it. There’s no rush with You, O Lord.

There’s no rush with You, O Lord.

It seems silly, the Pinot Noir and the lattes, but remembering that I gave myself the time to learn to like red wine and coffee reminds me of the truth in that prayer…there is no rush. It reminds me to be patient because, more often than not, good things take time.

So, often, I want to rush through my current season of life just to get to the next thing. Because I hate middles. Unfortunately (and also beautifully), the middles are where most of our actual lives happen. And the security that I crave in the middle seasons is more illusion than reality. Because once I get through one transitional season, there will always be another to come. Yet, knowing that deep down in my soul does not stop me from wanting to rush through all the middles in life to get to a place of security…a forever career, a marriage, a home.

But then I have to remember that prayer…there’s no rush with You, O Lord. Even when I am rushing, You are not. When I am scrambling, You are not. When I am impatient, You are infinitely patient.

And in these reminders I can see what must precede patience:

Trust.

Trust that God is loving, kind, generous, good, and sovereign. And if He is indeed these things, then also the trust to wait on the Lord. Not on marriage, a house, a job, or kids, but on Him.

Trust, too, that if I seek Him and His Word each day, He will show me that He is the one who gives me the security I constantly crave, no matter how transitional my current season may feel.

It’s like the coffee and the wine. I knew I would have to persevere through my initial distaste for each of them, but I also knew that if I kept showing up, at Starbucks and at French restaurants, I would eventually come to love both. I was willing to be patient in the process because I knew the end result would be worth the many unfinished cups of coffee and glasses of wine. And now I don’t even remember what it was like to not like coffee or wine. Where there once was distaste, now there is enjoyment. But that enjoyment never could have come without perseverance.

And it’s the same with this life. Making the daily decision to show up, seek God, and persevere in whatever season I find myself because I know that perseverance will bring joy and peace and contentment.

Paul says it this way,

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. ” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NLT)

So, when I am anxious and impatient for things I do not have, I cling to this hope. That what is coming will be worth the wait. And that all of my present troubles, as distasteful as they may sometimes feel, are actually preparing me to enjoy eternity more fully.

Just as I can now enjoy my black coffee every morning.

Catherine is a 20-something recent college grad back in her hometown, ATL, after attending Furman University in Greenville, SC. She has been hooked on writing ever since she got her first journal (hot pink with the word “journal” printed in the coolest font across the cover) when she was five years old. As a life-long follower of Jesus and a Religion major, Catherine most enjoys writing essays about the intersection of her daily life, her faith, and Scripture. Above all, Catherine hopes her writing encourages her readers and helps them to know the Lord more deeply. You can find more of her writing at apassionatepursuitweb.wordpress.com.