The Waiting List

Lately I have been thinking a lot about waiting. I hate waiting. When I was a kid I would rush through projects in school so that I could move on to the next project. As you can imagine, I made some terrible artwork...even for a grade 2. I have never liked waiting because it makes me feel like I am not in control, like I am not the boss, and that life is ticking by.
What seems like a simple issue of impatience, is so much bigger when I start thinking about all of the areas of my life that are impacted. From traffic to line-ups in a store, waiting for work to end, the weekend to start, waiting for an email, waiting for a decision, this "season" of life to end....I feel like I am always waiting.
Today I found out that I got wait listed for something. It was really not that big of a deal...seeing that regardless of this acceptance or not, I was going to decline. It was a little sad to know that I am wait-listed, even though I was "very close to the top" - whatever that means. But then I did something a little out of character. Instead of waiting to see if I was 'chosen,' I emailed them and told them that I had made other decisions and to please remove me from the list. It would have been nice for my ego to get notice saying that they were interested in me. But it was SO much more freeing to decline and not have to WAIT for their response.
I was talking to a friend today who is involved in a pretty complicated dating situation and the idea of waiting up again. She was telling me how she feels like she has changed so much in the past five years, that it is impossible to predict what she'll be looking for, or what she'll be doing in another five years. I was reminded that we wait to see where our lives will take us. A lot of the time, our lives will unfold in ways that are completely out of our control ...so, we wait. I was frustrated at this....I HATE waiting!
I need something that I can do in the meantime...in this in between time when I learn that it's about living in the moment...when I REALLY learn this...Here is what I came up with. My friend doesn't know where she'll be in five years, but she does know WHO she'll be. Because there is never any waiting involved there. We can be WHO we want to be in every moment of every day. We can be who we are intended to be at any moment, any minute. This is grace- and while I am just going to have to deal with the world around me not running according to my schedule, who I AM and what I VALUE are fully controlled by me...and I never have to wait. So my friend can rest in the fact that her values will deepen and develop and her experiences will continue to shape her- but she doesn't need to wait five years to know who the core of her is...what matters, who matters.
I realize that this is a small revelation- but it seems practical...at least a little, and that is what I need.