The In-Between

Book

The In-Between: Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing by Jeff Goins

My Highlights

If we reserve our joy only for the experiences of a lifetime, we may miss the life in the experience.

When it comes to waiting, we have a choice. We can try to bypass the delays to get immediate gratification. Or we can embrace the “long game” of life and invest those days, months, and years in the slow but intentional growth that leads to lasting change.

When we go on a journey, we’re often not sure how it will end, and this is the point. We travel to remember we are not done. Although there are destination points, what matters is that we stay on the road.

every arrival is not an event, but a process.

We are all waiting for something. And in that wait, there is a necessary tension, even a frustration, that doesn’t fully resolve. This doesn’t mean some things aren’t worth waiting for. It just means we don’t always get what we want, and rarely does it come all at once. Believe it or not, this is a good thing. Just like the delayed gratification between Christmas and Epiphany, we need to understand that the wait sometimes is essential to appreciate the gifts that follow, no matter how much we may resent the process. So through the angst and anticipation, in our longing to have and be more, we need to learn to enjoy this place.

Sometimes, all we need to do to find our calling is to look at what we love and see what’s always been there. The journey of discovering my life’s work was not a process of dreaming but remembering.

Change doesn’t happen in a moment, nor does it always come slowly over time. It’s happening here and now, every day, in the big and small. And every moment is a chance to choose. To not only accept the grace in front of us, but to boldly change the course we’ve been on for so very long.

We don’t get to choose how many days of life we have left, but we can choose how we spend them.

Life is waiting. Not just waiting in line at the grocery store or waiting to renew your driver’s license, but waiting to love and commit and find the work you were meant to do. Our lives are full of inconvenient setbacks, not due to some great cosmic mistake but because of some divine purpose we don’t comprehend. In the waiting, we become

Most people understand that in order to get from one place to the next, you must travel; you have to move. But few are willing to accept this in areas of personal growth. We can’t stand still; we will stagnate. The irony is that when we think we are standing still, we are actually growing the most. What gets us to our destinations are the pauses, the breaks, the in-between.