Hello, October! Let's Talk About Patience

Finding the Right Words about… the Wait. | October journaling challenge 🍂

not a podcast episode, but I’ma do some yappin’.

This was not part of my plan.

Fun fact: I plan out my monthly journal themes and prompts well in advance. I have documents and spreadsheets with ideas and drafts, and I organize them and make graphics and share them with the world at the appointed time.

But lately, God’s been looking at my plans and He’s like, “yeah… no. How about we do this instead?!”

We are entering the season that shows us when things fall apart, that doesn’t mean it’s the end.

Originally, the October Finding The Right Words Challenge was going to be under the theme of shame. I’ve been writing about my experiences with shame, guilt, stress, etc for some time now. Shame is starting point of my depressive spirals and my journal is the place where I unravel those spirals and try to find some peace. 

And lately, shame has been the name of the game in my life. I’ve been battling a lot of self-doubt, comparison, jealousy, discouragement, fear, overwhelm and words left unsaid. I was fully prepared to use my monthly journal challenge as a dumping ground for all my feelings.

But the true challenge for me would be to forgo writing about my hurt and instead write about my hope; my hope for what’s on the other side of my down days and waiting for better days to come.

So let’s write about The Wait.

October 2024 journal prompts

Every Friday during October (fingers crossed!) I will be writing a journal entry for one of these prompts and sharing it with you all on this newsletter! I encourage you all to write along with me and share with me by tagging me in your story or shooting me a DM or email if you don’t wanna publish your draft (I get it. *hugs*).

It’s easy for me to feel like I am in a perpetual suffering stage of life right now where things don’t appear to be working out, my plans fail, or things just feel stagnant and slow. But what if I reframed that suffering as a waiting stage instead? I’m not stressed about what I’m going through right now, because I know things are going to change – that’s literally how time works! And I want to practice focusing on what’s ahead of me instead of on what may be bothering me right now.

🍂 It’s October. We are entering the season of yellowing leaves and dropping temperatures. We are entering the season that shows us that when things fall apart, that doesn’t mean it’s the end. In fact, it’s just the beginning of beautiful changes and new growth if we can just make it through the shedding.

I’ve been getting so many messages about the value and virtue of patience. Between multiple sermons from my pastor about waiting on the Lord’s timing, to Josefina’s most recent essay where she literally said “Sometimes, the answer we’re looking for is to wait.”

Well, message received. I’m going to dedicate the rest of the month to the practice of patience. I hope you join me.

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