Somewhere Between Patience and Progress

Life’s lessons aren’t always found in straight lines.

I’ve been, as they say, going through it.
Nothing horrible, at least compared to most of the world—just the kind of slow, relentless change that tests your patience, vision, and resolve.

I won’t get into the details here. That’s not the purpose of sitting at my keyboard. My purpose is to share the lessons that surface for me in case they might help you on your own path.

Yesterday, I found myself with an hour or so between trips to my cardiologist and chiropractor (is this really what life after sixty is all about?). I was way out west, which every downtown Little Rocker knows means somewhere near I-430.

I’ve been trying to practice the best stress management I know. So I paused to think: should I go for a walk, drive home for ten minutes, grab a coffee, sit in my car and read? Then I remembered my visit to the Arkansas House of Prayer on Election Day 2024. Nestled in the trees, quiet and serene, it seemed like the perfect place to find a bit of calm.

Labyrinth at Arkansas House of Prayer (photo credit Arkansas House of Prayer— I left my phone in my car. I was there to meditate after all!)

Walking the path near the building, I came to a labyrinth.
My heart lifted. There it was, a spiral of stone tucked beneath the trees. I felt my shoulders drop, my chest loosen. A walking meditation. A way to move through the swirl without needing to solve it.

As I stepped in, I thought about how blessed I really am. My worries about cars, and houses, and family all mean that I have a car, a house (almost), and family. And here I was, with the time, health, and energy to walk this path on a beautiful fall morning.

If you’ve never walked a labyrinth, you enter at one side and follow a single winding path that loops back and forth until you reach the center. There’s no wrong turn, no dead end, only a pattern that asks you to keep moving. I followed it slowly, one turn at a time.

At first it felt like I was moving away from where I wanted to be. I was tempted to step over the path, jump to the middle—but that’s not the point, now is it? I realized that every step, even the ones that seemed backward, was still part of the way forward.

That was the message I needed.

Progress isn’t always visible. Sometimes the path curves out of sight just long enough to test our trust. But if we keep walking—steady, curious, grateful—we eventually arrive at the center.

And when we do, it’s quiet there.
Not because everything is solved, but because we finally stop trying to solve it.