Worth the Wait - Mailboxes, Near Kalispell, Montana

Big thanks to Sister #3 for today’s musings & Big Sky view during her recent Montana meanderings. 

 Rural mailboxes captured my imagination, reminders that some things in life are worth waiting for. 

"I love the rebelliousness of snail mail, and I love anything that can arrive with a postage stamp. There's something about that person's breath and hands on the letter." 

-Diane Lane in interview with Steve "Frosty" Weintraub, Sept. 26, 2008

Patience - Missoula Community Theatre, Missoula, Montana

“Patience is not an absence of action; 

  rather it is timing. 

It waits on the right time to act."

- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979)

Waiting In Hope - Missoula, Montana

Trying to grasp that this world no longer holds my vibrant and beautiful cousin MJ, my repeated thought is that I do not understand. 
And that I will be glad to someday see answers beyond this darkly glass. 
I know the promises - that we wait not in despair, but in hope, and that there is a peace that bypasses our understanding (or lack thereof, in my case). 
Yet may our grip be strengthened as we desperately cling to these truths, ‘midst the waiting.

Waiting for Spring Runoff, Missoula, Montana

"Our eyes rake autumn leaves like ore, panning horizons 

before they fade. We hike flat miles toward sundown,
alchemy of oaks, the fleeting shimmer of gold.
Nothing glitters at night but stars..."

- From "Pronghorns Show Us the Way" by Walt McDonald

Read the full poem - plus some other gems - here.

Waiting, East Missoula, Montana

“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.”
-Robert H. Schuller

Winter Waiting, Bozeman, Montana

Perhaps it’s merely an emotional Doppler effect from handling the first seed catalogue in yesterday’s mail, or maybe there really is so much angst-laden waiting projected from this wintry backyard scene.

Waiting for enough sun to eat al fresco dinners on the sheltered patio.
Waiting for new shoots on the bare little shrub that reminds me of the pirated forsythia branches waiting to root in my milk glass vase - the one my sister secretly covets that features vertically aligned white bumps.
Waiting for new, soft, pale tips to peek shyly from the ends of the pine branches.
Waiting for a fresh coat of fence stain to counteract monts of weathering winter.
Waiting for the snow to fully melt and not blow back in overnight.

Interestingly, my initial view of this night-time courtyard produced feelings of cozy peace. Timing is everything, so they say. I don’t care what paranoid thoughts the groundhog had about his shadow - it’s high time for some early signs of spring.

Aging Beauty, Missoula, Montana

"...The creation waits in eager expectation... in hope that [it] will be liberated from its bondage to decay....But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." - Paul the Apostle, Letter to the Romans, Chapter 8

When I slow down to enjoy creation, I glean increased patience, desperately needed, as I am not so good at waiting. I guess the better thing to pray for is not patience, but hope, which excels at waiting.

(Plus, it seems that whenever I've prayed for more patience, I end up with a trying situation, which of course, provides the opportunity to exercise my weak-ish patience muscles....)