If I were to summarise 2019 with one word it will be WAIT, or PATIENCE or any other one word that might describe the excruciating pain of feeling nothing is happening for a long time before something actually happens.
1) My green card application
I started my green card application process in January and having collating over 700 pages of paperwork I finally submitted the application on 3/15 and USCIS received my paperwork on 3/18. After the biometrics appointment took place in April I heard nothing back from USCIS until August 9 that I am in line for a green card interview which by the way I am still waiting in line as of 12/31 today. I did not receive my work permit till early October. This in turn screwed up my plan for another more important goal but as a Buddhist I am trying to let things unfold the way it is and not how I see it to be. Nature does not hurry to go from one season to another and I am trying to draw lessons from nature.
2) Marathon training
I challenged myself by running the marathon and bought a new treadmill to help me in my training after the old one broke. Our adoption of Momo changed the whole plan and I started running outdoors since April. As the training sessions got longer my leg muscles felt the fatigue and the whole Saturday or Sunday would be gone because I would be running 2-3 hours and sleeping another 2-3 hours to recover from the run. Now that I look back I know that I must have really wanted to achieve the goal very much, so much so that I was willing to participate in 18 races in 2017 and 2018 in order to qualify for marathon in 2019. These were solid hours of running I put in and if it was not for the inner desire in wanting to achieve it I would not know how to pull it off. My personal experience in going through the marathon day itself is to never give up. I ran steady for the first 15 miles but had no choice but to slow down and half walk/half run from my 16th - 22nd miles due to hunger and leg pain. My pace picked up from the 22nd mile to the end and I never felt better in my last few miles as I ran faster than I started. I think this mirrors life in general. Sometimes in life when things get tough or overwhelming you slow down but never give up.
3) Our new house
Nothing tests our patience more than the purchase of our new house. After two years of searching on and off my husband and I finally found our dream house in July. The dream house kind of became a nightmare when we were informed that additional $12,500 was needed to finish the 3rd floor foyer, in addition to the delay in installing the kitchen. No one seemed to care or know what another party is doing and the completion work took forever. To add the icing to the cake the bank took forever to get my loan cleared for closing. What was originally scheduled as a Thanksgiving move became an early January 2020 move instead.
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