Journal Prompts for Seasons of Waiting
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Waiting is not a pause before your life resumes. It is a large part of most lives, and pretending otherwise makes it lonelier than it needs to be.
Psalm 19:14 asks that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. The meditation of the heart is the part that runs underneath a long wait, mostly unsupervised. Writing it down is how you find out what it has been saying. These prompts do not assume your wait is nearly over. They assume you are in it and need somewhere to put what it is doing to you.
Naming It
1. What am I waiting for, in plain words?
2. How long has it been?
3. What did I assume, when this started, about how long it would take?
4. Who knows I am waiting, and who have I stopped telling?
5. What does the waiting cost me on an ordinary Tuesday?
Being Honest With God
6. What do I want to say to Him about this that I have not said?
7. Am I angry, and if so, at what exactly?
8. What have I stopped praying about because I am tired of asking?
9. What would I want Him to know about how this feels?
10. What do I still believe about Him while this is unresolved?
Looking Around
11. What is genuinely good in my life right now, unrelated to the thing I am waiting for?
12. Who has stayed?
13. What have I become able to do that I could not do before this started?
14. Who else is waiting, and could I be useful to them?
Living In It
15. What am I putting off until the waiting ends?
16. Which of those things could I do anyway?
17. What would this month look like if I stopped treating it as temporary?
18. What is one ordinary thing I could enjoy this week without guilt?
Two Things Worth Saying
The prompts in the last section are the hardest, and they are the point. A wait becomes far heavier when it turns the rest of life into a waiting room.
And there is no right answer to number seventeen. Some waits genuinely are temporary and should be treated that way. You are the one who knows which kind yours is.
